Return to the Shadows
by KatieByHerself
Summary: In a post-SH3 world, James and Heather struggle to make sense of what has happened to their lives, and how they can get back what was lost.  The sequel/continuation of "Out of the Shadows."
1. Chapter 1

**1.**

He watched the coffin being lowered into the ground, and he felt a part of his soul being ripped from his body and descend with it.

Cheryl (Heather, he reminded himself, it had been nearly nine years since she had decided to be called Heather) stood beside him, shaking like a leaf and weeping quietly. In some dim recesses of his mind, the parts that weren't completely consumed by grief, he was glad she was crying; she had been nearly catatonic for the last week, staring off into space, forgetting to eat until he forced food on her, wandering the house in a daze at odd hours. At least the tears showed she was still human, still present in her own mind and body somewhere, and that she understood. That was what had frightened him the worst, the idea that she didn't understand what was going on and was denying the reality of the situation. He knew the danger of that kind of thinking, he knew it firsthand. Thinking like that, refusing to accept what had happened, was so damn attractive to that place, so powerful.

Of course, he wasn't innocent of those dark thoughts either.

The reverend, some hired suit that hadn't known them and now never would, blathered on, something about the Valley of the Shadow of Death and fearing no evil. He knew that this was typical funeral jargon, had heard it all before and would undoubtedly hear it again, and he wondered idly if it ever actually comforted anyone. Besides, whoever had written it had never been in the presence of real evil. Death didn't walk in a valley and have a partnership with evil; death lurked in poorly-lit corridors, haunted foggy streets, appeared suddenly on rooftops, and made itself known with a burst of radio static and the stink of blood and rust.

He started; someone, probably the hired suit, had put a rose in his hand. He stared at it stupidly, so lost in his thoughts and his grief that he had no idea what he was supposed to do with it. Then Heather, holding her own rose, took a step forward and dropped it into the open grave, where it bounced once and then rested across the top of the coffin. Her other hand, still clutching his wrist with a strength born of desperation, tugged him forward. He held his own rose out over the grave's edge and released it. He watched it fall, rotating once in the air before it came to rest next to her rose.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," the hired reverend intoned, and tossed a handful of dirt in after their roses. He frowned, watching the dirt splatter across the roses and mar the shiny surface of the wooden coffin. That wasn't right, it wasn't right that it had to be so dirty, so… final.

The reverend stopped talking, and he was dimly grateful that the man had finally shut up and he didn't have to tune him out any longer. Then Heather started sobbing and clutching at him, burying her face in his shoulder and holding onto the back of his suit in a tight grip. Mechanically, he put his arms around her, knowing that he should comfort her but not sure how, not sure how to comfort someone else when his own grief seemed so insurmountable.

"Oh, J.D.," she wept, her words muffled against him. "Oh, J.D., what are we going to do without him? What are we going to do?"

James Sunderland had no idea how to answer her, and so he held her as best he could while he stared down into the grave, his tearless eyes riveted to Harry Mason's coffin.

**2.**

He was in the basement, the basement that had been converted into a workshop over the years. It was full of tools, bits of wood and metal, and smelled pleasantly of sawdust and oil. Harry had called it James's Man Cave, he remembered, and he felt a spike of grief so strong that it was physically painful. He closed his eyes, wishing he could cry, wishing the tears would come because then the loss would feel real, but at the same time fighting against them because crying would make it final. If he cried, he would be admitting to himself that Harry really was gone. Gone like his mother, gone like Mary… gone like almost everyone else he had ever cared about, turned into dust and bones.

He opened his eyes and looked critically at the mess on his workbench. The antique radio lay in pieces in front of him, its various components carefully sorted out into piles and organized according to what order they would be put back together. James had taken the radio apart more times than he could remember over the years, and even in his immense, overwhelming sadness, his hands knew what to do to put it back together. The old, familiar motions lulled him, soothed him, distracted him just enough that he didn't really have to think but didn't really have to feel either.

"J.D.?"

He turned around. Heather stood at the top of the stairs, holding an old photo album. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were red, but at least she looked alert, present in her own body and mind again. He noticed that she was wearing one of Harry's old running shirts, which billowed and sagged around her small frame, but he decided not to mention it.

James tried to force a smile, but stopped when he realized it probably looked more like a grimace. "Yeah, Little Bit?"

She clutched the album to her chest, using both hands to hold it like a sacred offering, which, in a way, it had become. "Can I come sit with you for awhile? I… I'm feeling…" her voice hitched a little, "I'm feeling kind of lonely."

He gestured for her to come down the stairs. Wordlessly, she rushed down the stairs and sat next to him on the bench. He carefully pushed some of the radio parts out of the way, and caught her significant look. James glanced at her shirt and then raised one eyebrow at her. She flushed a little and looked away, the implication clear: I won't ask about the t-shirt if you don't ask about the radio.

She set the album on the workbench and opened it carefully, reverently. She flipped to a spot about one-third of the way through, and James realized that she wanted to see the pictures that had him in them; the first part of the album was devoted to photos taken before he had joined the family. He wanted to be flattered, but he also suspected that she had already poured over the early pictures of herself and her dad.

Heather turned the pages silently, slowly, looking hungrily at any photo that featured her father and spending much less time on the photos that were only of her. She stopped at one in particular and pointed it out to him, and James gave up all pretense of working on the radio. "Do you remember this?" she asked, trying to smile, although her voice betrayed the tears lurking just behind her eyes. "That was your first Christmas with us."

James nodded, feeling slightly embarrassed. "Our first Christmas in this house."

"You got me a camera."

"And you used it to take that picture." They studied it together. It showed James and Harry sitting next to each other on the couch; Harry was holding a cup of coffee and laughing, one arm slung around James's neck, who was trying to avoid having his picture taken and looking vaguely surly. One of James's arms was in a cast; he'd fallen off the roof several days before while trying to help Harry put up Christmas decorations, and all three of them had gotten to spend several hours in the local ER and then the night in the hospital when a storm closed the roads.

She turned a few more pages, then skipped several more that only had pictures of her on them. She paused on a page that wasn't a photo at all but a newspaper clipping. Lightly touching the page, she whispered, "Dad was so handsome in a tuxedo…"

"He was," James agreed, staring at the clipping with her. It was taken about five years ago, when Harry had won a literary award. Nothing huge, but not exactly small either. The photo in the clipping showed Harry accepting the award and smiling out at the camera, looking nervous and a little self-conscious. James remembered that night for a reason that he could never, ever share with Heather; that night, in their hotel, was the first time he'd let Harry top him. It had taken five years of gentle coaxing, talking, and working through his hang-ups, but he'd eventually been able to give to Harry what had once been taken from him, and his only regret was that it had taken him so long. Harry had been so tender, so considerate and patient with him, and he had never been able to give him anything back. All he had done in their ten years together was take and take and take.

Heather looked up at him. "Are you okay?"

James blinked rapidly several times, his eyes hot but dry. The tears still wouldn't come. "I'm fine," he told her, a little sharper than he intended.

She looked at him for a little longer, then shook her head. "No, you're not," she said simply, and started turning pages in the album again.

They looked at the photos in silence for another half hour, both of them hungrily studying the pictures of Harry, both lost in their own private reminiscence. Finally, Heather turned to the last page, which was her own high school graduation photo.

Taken only two weeks ago, it showed all three of them, Heather standing between the two men in her life and beaming, her rolled-up diploma in one hand. Harry had one arm around her waist, and his face was alight with pride and love. He looked older than in the early photos; he had some fine lines around his eyes and swirls of silver in the dark hair at his temples, swirls that he thought made him look old and that James thought made him look distinguished. James himself had one arm around Heather's shoulders and was also smiling proudly. He looked older too, his blond hair starting to fade to silver in a few spots and his muscles no longer as defined as they had once been. All three of them looked exceptionally happy. It was a beautiful little photo.

A tear splashed down onto the page. Heather's shoulders shook with quiet sobs as she ran her hand over the photo, covering herself and James so that only her father smiled out at her. Awkwardly, James put an arm around her, slightly envious of her ability to let it all out and give voice to her grief. She turned into him and wept on his shoulder again.

"It's not fair," she moaned. "It's just not fair…"

"It never is, Little Bit. It never is." He hugged her close, comforting her as best he could, which he suspected was a poor substitute to the kind of reassurance Harry could have given her if their roles had been reversed. Not for the first time, he wished they were.


	2. Chapter 2

**1.**

He was in a hallway, a long one that he didn't know. He walked down it, hurrying but not running. When he got to the end, he opened the solitary red door.

The room was unremarkable, a typical hotel room, furnished simply and inelegantly. What was remarkable was the fact that Harry lay stretched out on the bed, reading by the light of the room's solitary lamp.

He slammed the door behind him in shock, and Harry looked up from his book. "Oh, you're here!" he exclaimed, and he put the book down and sat up with his usual fluid grace. "I've been waiting for you, where have you been?"

He didn't answer, probably couldn't have answered even if he wanted to. He rushed over to the bed and knocked Harry back on it with a rough, enthusiastic embrace. Harry laughed, surprised but pleased. "I'm happy to see you too," Harry told him, but he was interrupted when he kissed him, covering Harry's mouth with his own, desperate and seeking. Harry buried his hands in his hair and pulled him down across the bed with him, responding to his coarse and somewhat clumsy affection.

They rolled around on the narrow, anonymous bed, just as they had done for the last ten years on their bed at home, and he tore at Harry's clothes, ripping some of them in his eagerness to get them off. Harry snickered and rolled his eyes, resigned to another ruined shirt, another destroyed pair of boxers, but didn't resist, even participated, pulling and tugging at his clothing until they were both naked and excited, breathing heavily.

He rolled Harry onto his back and crouched over him, hiding the other man's body with his own, and hungrily kissed Harry's neck. Harry moaned underneath him, clutching at his back with strong hands, and arched his body against him. He worked his way down, kissing and licking, raking his teeth down Harry's chest, knowing he would leave bruises behind but not caring, knowing that Harry wouldn't care either, as long as the purple stains on his skin could be hidden by clothing. Harry always had liked it a little rough, enjoyed a little pain to heighten his pleasure, and he was only too happy to provide.

He continued downward, and the feeling of Harry's erection dragging against his stomach and towards his chest made him growl deep in his throat, and he had to force himself to slow down, to not rush forward. He wasn't that type of person; he never had been, he could control himself, he wasn't an animal. He paused at Harry's stomach, smoothing the sparse, tangled hairs that grew downwards from Harry's navel with one hand, caressing one of the other man's thighs with the other.

From somewhere above his head, Harry groaned. "Quit teasing me and do it!" he hissed.

He grinned, his face still pressed into Harry's stomach, and adjusted his position once again. Harry's cock bumped against the side of his face as he nuzzled the space where his leg joined his body, inhaling a scent as familiar as his own. Harry shifted under him, rubbing insistently against his face, and he turned to the side, licking Harry in one smooth motion from shaft to tip. Harry groaned again and reached down, grabbed two handfuls of his hair, and started pushing on his head. Still grinning, he resisted for just a moment, then let himself be pushed, taking Harry's entire length into his mouth, reveling in the taste he had grown to love.

Harry let go of his head and leaned back, panting, as he teased him with long, slow strokes of his tongue and throat. With one finger, he pressed upwards into Harry's body, searching for and finding that sweet spot that always completely melted Harry, turned him into putty in his hands.

He kept it up, sucking, licking, and stroking, until Harry reached down and grabbed his head again. He tugged at his hair, demanding his attention, and when he paused to look up, Harry met his eyes and said, quietly, "Now. I want it now."

He sat up and rocked backwards on his knees, pulling Harry with him by the hips. Harry lay still, looking up at him with eyes both trusting and hungry, from a position that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else but he somehow made look sophisticated and gracious. He pushed Harry's thighs apart, splaying him open, and then thrust in all at once, causing Harry to gasp and arch his back, squeezing his eyes shut. He watched as Harry twisted the crumpled sheets in his hands, panting and damp with sweat, and the sight drove him almost to the edge. With a conscious effort, he pulled back from the brink and started thrusting, slowly at first and then faster.

They had done this hundreds, thousands, of times, but each time it felt new, exciting. He closed his eyes to the sensations cascading over him, but even in his own ecstasy he found himself listening to Harry, listening for his breathing rhythms and responding to how he moved beneath him. He knew that he'd been a selfish lover in the past, demanding even, but with Harry he tried to be giving as best he knew how, but even then he knew deep in his heart that he could never give back to Harry what had been given to him.

Harry went first, shuddering and bucking underneath him, and he opened his eyes to watch him, unable to contain his voyeurism even though he knew that his partner didn't appreciate it. He watched as it arced upward and hit Harry's bare chest, and the sight of it brought him to the very edge himself, just like it always did.

Somewhere behind them, he could hear water dripping.

Suddenly, two gaping wounds opened across Harry's chest, exactly where the fluid had landed. The wounds were wide, deep, lipless, and he could feel his eyes bulging in his sockets as Harry's heavy breathing turned into wet gurgles and two twin geysers of blood shot up from his chest. He watched, frozen in terror, as the blood arced towards Harry's face and landed in a splatter around his head, splashing across his face and forming a bloody halo.

As suddenly as they had appeared, the wounds knit themselves closed, turning into old, deep scar tissue. Like a spreading disease, the skin around them turned ashy and grey, the color of a corpse, and he felt Harry turn cold under his hands. Hardly aware that the walls around them were changing too, turning discolored and damp with age and rot, he watched as the grey skin spread outward, down Harry's stomach and over his arms, encompassing him like a sick cloak.

Harry's blue eyes rolled in his head, wide with terror. "What's happening to me?" he asked, pleading. "Help me, please, help me!" and he clutched at him with hands as cold and ashen as the grave. Hating himself for it, he felt himself flinch under their touch.

The bloodstains on the pillow started rippling and changing, expanding and moving upwards towards Harry's face, changing themselves into rusty red steel. Harry let go of him and frantically clawed at the growing metal, ripping new wounds open on his hands that didn't bleed but immediately formed scars on his grey, dead skin. "Help me!" he screamed as the metal grew forward and started to close over his face, but he couldn't, he recognized what was happening now, and he couldn't move for the terror.

The metal thrust forward, nearly stabbing him in the eye, and he instinctually jerked backwards from it, remembering that burned blood stink. He caught one last glimpse of Harry's terrified eyes before the metal closed and sealed itself, and then the transformation was complete and he was holding a monster.

The monster heaved one great, ragged breath, and then took a ferocious swipe at him with one arm. He flew backwards and away from it, the monster moving his weight as easily as a child swatting at a fly. He hit the wall so hard it knocked all the breath out of him, and he slid to the floor in a crumpled heap, unable to move from the pain and the fear.

Across the room, the monster staggered to its feet. It pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around its waist, and the sheet's reality rippled, almost like static across an old television screen, and it became a bloody, stained butcher's apron. The monster rolled its shoulders, shook its head as well as its heavy helmet would allow, and then started moving towards him.

He tried to get up, to move away, but all his circuits were jammed and he couldn't… no matter how loudly the panic and terror screamed at him to get up and run, his legs were as weak and useless as a newborn child's. He remembered this monster, he _knew_ it, and he knew the way it moved, so slow it was almost comical, but only as long as you watched. The moment you looked away or even blinked, the thing was right next to you, right on top of you, and you couldn't watch it forever, you had to look away some time.

Even as he thought this, the monster blinked forward and was standing directly in front of him, looming over him in a way that Harry never had. Its head was tilted, and even though it didn't have any discernible eyes, he knew it was staring at him.

"Har… Harry?" he tried, forcing the words out past his paralyzed muscles.

The monster's head moved, once to the left, once to the right, back to center. Even in the midst of his terror, he realized that this was the first time the thing had ever acted like it understood human speech.

Abruptly, the monster pointed at him with one hand, and his muscles overcame their paralysis long enough to jerk backwards. Still pointing at him, the monster raised its other hand to its throat and made a slicing gesture across its neck.

He cringed away from it, all his senses yammering at him at once, denying its reality while at the same time all too aware of its overpowering presence. The monster brought its hands to its chest, cracked its knuckles, and then its arms shot forward, reaching for his throat.

**2.**

James jolted awake, the breath knocked out of him and his head spinning. He was tightly wrapped up in a tangle of blankets and limbs, his forearms scorched with rug-burns. Struggling to focus his eyes, he looked around wildly, trying to figure out where he was, if there was any danger lurking in the shadows.

He was on the floor next to the couch in the living room, his own safe, ordinary living room. Slowly, the tatters of the nightmare world started to recede as his heartbeat slowed and he got control over his breathing.

"J.D.?"

Goddammit, not now. Not while he was still feeling so vulnerable, so naked, from the dream. "It's okay, Little Bit," he muttered, trying to untangle himself with as much dignity as he could muster. "Just a bad dream."

She stood in the doorway, her eyes puffy with sleep and red-lined from recently-shed tears. James was suddenly, painfully reminded of his first week with them, the first time he'd had a nightmare and she had offered him a stuffed bunny to keep the bad dreams away.

Heather must have been thinking the same thing, because the corner of her mouth crinkled upwards, like her body was trying to remember what her soul had forgotten how to do. "Do you need Mr. Hopper?" she asked.

James grunted and finally pulled the last of the blankets free. "Thought he was just for nightmares. I didn't know he could do anything for grief."

Her lower lip trembled, and he felt like the worst person on earth. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Just… not myself right now."

Her lip stopped trembling, and he could see her physically gather herself and get control over her emotions. "You hurt yourself," she said, pointing at the rug-burns skidding up his arms. "I'll go get the first-aid kit."

"You don't need to—"

"Yes, I do," she interrupted, already turning around and heading towards the bathroom. "You'll let those get infected if I don't."

James sat on the couch and looked critically at the marks on his arms. They were pretty nasty, stinging and full of carpet fibers. The damnable thing was that she was right; left to his own devices, he probably would let them get infected. Not that it mattered anyway. Without Harry, nothing mattered anymore. A certain part of him would welcome a good deep tissue infection—at least the pain would distract him from the deep, aching sadness.

Heather came back and crouched on the floor in front on him, the first-aid kit in one hand. "Let me see," she said, brusque and business-like, and grabbed his wrists when he wasn't fast enough. "Christ, J.D., how do you do this to yourself?"

He hissed as she poured a liberal dose of hydrogen peroxide over the burns, making them foam and bubble. "I fell off the couch," he admitted, knowing that she had deduced that much on her own. "It happened when I landed."

"Why are you sleeping on the couch anyway?" she asked, smearing Neosporin over her fingers and gently dabbing it onto his wounds.

He didn't answer her, couldn't find the words to answer, but instead looked across the room at Harry's computer, sitting dark and silent in the corner. She followed his gaze, letting her eyes linger on the computer, and then looked back down, tending to his burns with intense concentration.

Heather wrapped the burns in gauze, which James thought was overkill but allowed, knowing that she was trying to keep from crying again. When he was taped up to her satisfaction, she looked up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "I… I keep wearing his shirts," she admitted, her voice shaky. "They smell like him."

James hung his head, unable to meet her gaze. He had his own sorrow, he couldn't take on hers too.

She grabbed his hands, holding them in both of hers. "I'm so scared, J.D. What happens when they don't smell like him anymore? What happens when I forget what his voice sounded like? What happens when I… when I… when I _forget_?"

Her last word was a sob, and she was crying again, despite her valiant efforts to stay composed. She crossed her arms, buried her face in them, and started weeping on his knees.

James reached out awkwardly and touched the back of her head, smoothing down her strawberry-blonde hair. Her light hair and fair complexion tended to make people think that she was his biological daughter, a fact that had irritated Harry immensely and secretly pleased James; it made him feel more attached, more permanent, when people mistook her for his child. He knew, though, that Harry had really held her heart, and that he had always been the outsider in the family.

Some of the tape holding down his gauze caught on her hair, and James pulled it free as carefully as he could, but still managed to give her hair a good tug. She looked up at him, her face shining with tears, and whispered, "I'd give anything to have him back. Anything at all."

He hugged her then, and while she cried in his arms, he whispered into her shoulder, so quietly that she didn't hear him, "Me too, Little Bit. Me too."


	3. Chapter 3

**1.**

Every night, it was the same dream. Over and over again, on an endless loop, the same dream—he was with Harry, and then Harry turned into the pyramid-headed monster, and then he woke up, shaking and terrified for reasons he couldn't explain.

The sick thing was that, in a way, he looked forward to the recurring nightmare, because it was a chance to be with Harry again, even for a short time. Even knowing how it would end, knowing the transformation was inevitable and unstoppable, he found himself looking forward to the first part of the dream and the sensations it brought with it. The horror of the dream's second part was still vivid and visceral, but somehow having Harry back, even for a few minutes, even in a shadowy dream world, was worth it.

James had always known he was fucked in the head, and this just proved it.

One night, after Harry had transformed and become the monster, when the monster had him in the corner, he asked it a question. He didn't think he would get a response, he wasn't hoping for one, he wasn't even sure why he was trying to communicate with the thing that haunted his dreamscapes and turned the best thing in his life into an abomination; however, no one could ever claim that once James Sunderland got something in his head, he wouldn't follow it through, and maybe, just maybe, he thought there might be some small part of Harry hidden behind that rusty red helm, and that Harry might force the thing to answer him.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, hopelessly, trying to delay the thing's dive for his throat and the accompanying terror as long as possible.

The thing tilted its heavy head back and started making a noise James had never heard it make before; it was a dark, wet, gurgling noise, a sound like diseased lungs struggling to breath, and for one horrible moment he was reminded of Mary. Then he realized the thing was laughing, and his blood froze in his veins.

As quickly as it started, the thing stopped laughing and looked down at him again. It pointed at him with one hand and with the other made a strange, fluttering motion to one side. The gesture looked surprisingly feminine and delicate for the monster, but James understood the meaning as clearly as if it had spoken: You got away.

**2.**

He sat bolt-upright in bed, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat.

The clock on the nightstand blinked 3:41 at him in orange numbers, and the house was still around him, the only sound his ragged breathing. The thing had communicated with him, let him know why it was haunting his dreams… he got away.

James clenched the damp sheet in his fist, suddenly furious. He hadn't gotten away, he'd been haunted by that thing and that place for the last ten years! It was never far away from him, he was never truly free of it. The only time he felt any peace, the only time he felt like himself again, was when he was with Harry, and now that was gone too and it felt like that place's hold on him increased a little more every day. And now that thing had the audacity to suggest that he got away, that he was free from its influence and sick, corrosive effect.

James picked up a pillow and flung it across the room, where it bounced off the dresser and landed on the floor with an unsatisfying plop. He flopped back onto the mattress with an angry sigh and glared up at the ceiling. In a way, he was grateful to the thing—usually he awoke to horror that almost immediately turned into heart-rending loneliness, feeling like he had lost Harry all over again. Anger at least he could understand. Anger he knew how to process.

He lay in the bed that he had returned to reluctantly, after deciding that reaching out for someone who wasn't there was slightly preferable to falling off the couch, and thought dark thoughts, the kind of thoughts that hadn't troubled him in years.

**3.**

He's up to something, I know it.

He thinks he's being subtle, that I'm too wrapped up in missing Dad to notice him, but he's wrong. J.D. has always worn his heart on his sleeve; he can't hide anything he's feeling, and he's really lucky that he's never tried his hand at poker, because he'd suck at it.

I'm worried about him. I don't know what he's thinking, but it can't be anything good, not the way he broods and mopes around the house. The moping I get, I can't find any enthusiasm for anything either, but the brooding is something different. There's an undercurrent of anger to it, and that anger scares me. It's like it's bubbling just below the surface, waiting for an excuse to get loose and destroy everything in its path, and it scares me more than anything in that place ever could. J.D.'s a little older now, but he's still a big, strong guy, and I think that if he ever really, really lost his temper, he might do something that he couldn't take back.

I don't think J.D. realizes that he's all I have left, and that losing him now would… well, it would be the end of me. That's it, no more Heather Mason, the end, goodbye. I need him, but J.D. never thinks that anyone needs him, he's always surprised when someone depends on him or even wants him around. When he had Dad around to reassure him (probably constantly, although I don't know for sure), he was okay, and maybe even believed that we loved him and needed him, but now… now he's lost again. He was lost when he first got here; I was only a little girl then, but I remember how lost he was, I remember asking Dad if he was going to run away, and I remember that Dad couldn't answer me because he didn't know.

But Dad's gone now, gone away and left a huge fucking hole in the middle of our lives, and sometimes I feel like we're on opposite sides of this giant abyss created by Dad's death. We can see each other, we know that the other person is there, but we can't reach across the hole, can't help each other, can't even help ourselves. I love J.D., and I know that he loves me, but without Dad to hold us together, we're on our own.

I wish I could fix this, and I think that with enough time I probably could, but J.D. is pulling away, turning into someone else, and I'm so scared that I won't have time to figure anything out before he does something stupid and I'm left all by myself.

At least he's sleeping in his bed again. I know he's still having nightmares, but maybe they aren't as bad when he's in his bed instead of on the couch, and at least he's not falling out of bed and hurting himself. He probably thinks that I don't know about how he used to carry Dad to bed almost every night (and honestly, I've tried not to think about it since I was old enough to figure out what it meant), but I do, and it made me so sad that he was sleeping out there, like he was waiting for Dad to come back and need him again. I didn't think I had room for any more sadness until he woke me up that first night with his rug-burns—he just looked so lonely, so abandoned, like a little kid that has lost his only friend and was trying to get him back the only way he knew how, and if my heart wasn't already broken, it would have broken right then and there.

To top it all off, we're both in danger of starving to death, since Dad always did all the cooking and neither one of us has any idea how to make anything on our own. It's been straight take-out and fast food since… well, _since_, and I don't know about J.D., but I'm feeling sick and gross all the time from it, and feeling like crap doesn't help with grief at all, let me tell you.

I bought a frozen pizza today, and somehow managed to burn the edges while leaving the center soggy and uncooked. Not that it really mattered, since neither J.D. or I are eating like we usually do, but it still made me feel crappy that I can't do anything without Dad. It also made me feel a little angry—Dad had so much time to teach me how to do stuff like this, and he never did, and now he's gone and I'm completely helpless and have to learn all this shit on my own.

J.D. didn't seem to care about the pizza's unappetizing nature. He dutifully took a couple of pieces and ate them mechanically, staring off into space and only speaking when I spoke to him, and even then in monosyllabic grunts. It gets exhausting trying to hold up a conversation like that, so eventually I just stopped and focused on my own gross slices.

We were done eating and just sitting there, waiting for something to happen or for the other one to do something, when J.D. asked me a question that I never thought he'd ask.

"What would you do to get him back?" he asked, as casual and nonchalant as if he were asking about the weather.

I gaped at him, completely shocked. He looked at me quizzically, one eyebrow partially arched, waiting patiently for my answer. That was creepy in and of itself; J.D. is a lot of things, but patient doesn't usually top the list, especially about things that he really wants. And I knew that he wanted Dad back as badly as I did, probably even more. "J.D…." I started hesitantly, "Dad is gone. He's not coming back."

"But what if he's not really gone? What if he's… trapped somewhere?"

"Are you talking about limbo?" I had read Dante over the school year, and the limbo level of Hell had been the creepiest one, in my humble and unpopular opinion. The lonely, abandoned, hopeless souls in limbo had been more terrifying than anything in the deeper levels.

He shook his head. "No, not limbo. Somewhere else. Somewhere… that we both know. That he knew."

I dropped my fork, and it clattered off the tile floor with a sharp, ringing sound. "Are you talking about _that_ place, J.D.?" I asked, dreading his answer but already knowing what it would be.

He nodded, his eyes showing the first spark of life and eagerness that I had seen in a long time. "What if he's there, Little Bit? What if he's lost and can't find his way home?"

I shrank back, ashamed but unable to help myself. For the first time, I worried about J.D.'s sanity. What he was talking about… it was like the grief had tattered his grip on reality and made him focus on the worst thing he could remember.

J.D. must have noticed the look on my face; typical, that he would choose that particular moment to become perceptive. "I know it sounds crazy, Little Bit, but… but every night, it's the same dream. Always the same. He's in that place, and it's changing him, doing something to him… he needs help, and I think he's trying to reach out to me in my dreams." His hands shot out across the table and grabbed mine as I gasped in surprise—he's so much faster than a man his size should be. "What if he needs help? What if he's waiting for me?"

"J.D., he's not waiting for you. He's…" and here I had to swallow, had to force the word out, "he's _dead_, and he's not coming back."

"But what if he's not?" J.D. countered stubbornly. "You know how that place changes things, how things that have no right being alive are. What if it works the other way too?"

I opened my mouth to respond, then had to shut it. There was a certain logic to that, a certain logic that sparked a sudden desperate, impossible longing deep in my chest. "I'd do anything to see him again," I whispered, hardly aware that I was speaking.

J.D. suddenly dropped my hands like they were hot and sat back in his chair, eyeing me critically. "No," he said firmly. "No, you're not going."

"What? You're not seriously thinking about going, are you?"

He shrugged, refusing to meet my eyes. "He would go there for me," he said quietly.

"Not if you were dead! He wouldn't if he had buried you the week before!" I saw J.D. flinch, and I hated hurting him when he was already in so much pain, but he needed to hear this. "Dad wouldn't throw everything away on some hunch, something that came to him in a dream!"

J.D. sighed, his shoulders hunched in a very familiar posture. "He wouldn't if I died naturally," he said, slowly, like he was thinking. "But if he thought that place had me, that I was trapped, he would go. He wouldn't let that place take me." He looked up, his eyes burning. "He would go there for me."

I couldn't argue with that, because he was right; Dad would have gone to the ends of the earth for J.D. or for me. Until I came home and found him, I half-expected him to leap out and help me during my own journey to that place. "You're going to go there, aren't you?"

J.D. hung his head and didn't answer, and that was answer enough. "When are we leaving?"

That got his attention. His head shot up and he glared at him. "I already told you, you're not going. It's too dangerous."

I laughed, I couldn't help it, even though nothing about the situation was funny. "No shit, it's dangerous! I was just there, J.D., and the only reason I'm going back is so your stupid ass doesn't get killed!"

He shook his head. "I won't let you."

"You can't stop me!" I responded, getting angry myself now. "You're all I've got left and I'm not letting you go off by yourself on some half-cocked rescue mission that you might not come back from! I'm going, and that's final!" I slammed my hand down on the table, making the plates and the slowly congealing pizza jump.

J.D. glared at me for a moment longer, then he smiled, which nearly shocked me out of my anger. It was a grim, humorless smile, but it was the first one I'd seen from him in nearly a week. "You really are your father's daughter, you know that?" he asked.

"I'm both my fathers's daughter," I retorted. "My dad wouldn't do anything this stupid, but my James-Dad wouldn't take no for an answer." I shrugged and brushed angry tears out of my eyes. "So when are we leaving to go get ourselves killed?"

"Thank you, Little Bit," J.D. said quietly, and there was so much tenderness and love in his voice, more than he could have possibly been aware of, that I started crying in earnest. He put his arms around me and let me cry on his shoulder, his shoulder that was so much broader and stronger than Dad's, and waited until I was done. Then he asked, "How does tomorrow night sound? We can drive all night and get there in the morning. I… I want to try and find Harry before nightfall."

"And if we can't?" I asked, my voice muffled on his shirt sleeve.

"We will."


	4. Chapter 4

**1.**

There was no way he was letting her go with him.

It had been a bad idea to let her know what he was planning, James realized that now. All he had wanted was to get some reassurance, to know that he wasn't going completely out of his mind; he had never in a million years dreamed that Heather would want to go with him. And now he had to come up with some kind of plan to keep her at home, and it would have to be shady, because there was no way he could talk her out of it now.

A tiny voice in the back of his head, one that he had gotten very good at ignoring over the years, whispered to him that maybe she was right, maybe this was a fool's mission and he should just stay where he was, work through the sadness and grief, and try to move on with his life. Another voice, much louder and more strident, insisted that if there was any chance he could have Harry back, any chance at all, he needed to take it, even if it meant returning to that place that had haunted and cursed his life for so long. James knew which one he should be listening to, and listened to the other one.

That still left the problem of what to do about Heather. She had gotten up early that morning and spent the day packing and repacking a pair of rucksacks, trying to decide what to take to that place with them. They hadn't talked about her experience in that place, but James thought that it wouldn't matter what she packed or how carefully she considered each item; that place decided for you what you could and couldn't have, and all the forethought in the world wouldn't matter one bit once you crossed the border into Silent Hill. All the same, he let her pack and worry over energy drinks and beef jerky, since it kept her busy and left him alone to figure out how to keep her here. How to keep her safe.

"I'm going to the garage," he announced midafternoon. Heather was sprawled on the floor in the living room, surrounded by batteries, food, and bandages, carefully scrutinizing each item before sorting it into one of many smaller piles.

"Why?" she asked, studying a crank-operated flashlight before setting it down and looking up at him.

"I'm going to check the oil in the Jeep, make sure it's tuned up."

"Can't you do that here?"

"One of the tools I need is at the garage," he lied smoothly. She was right, he could tune up the Jeep just as easily here as at the garage, but there was someone he wanted to see.

She nodded, then went back to her project. Feeling slightly guilty that all her work was going to be for nothing, James slipped out.

The guys at the garage didn't know how to act around him.

James had expected this; ever since they'd found out he lived with another man, they hadn't known quite how to treat him, and now that that other man was dead and James was obviously in mourning, they were really confused. Then again, he wasn't sure that they'd be much better if a woman in his life had passed on. He remembered that his co-workers in another garage, in another time, had been completely useless when Mary had passed.

He spent about half an hour fiddling with the Jeep, checking things that didn't need to be checked and making minute, unnecessary adjustments to the engine, all the while keeping his eyes open and watching for Weasel.

His name wasn't really Weasel, of course, but no one called him anything else. He was short, scrawny, with bright, darting eyes like some small animal, and he had been in and out of jail his entire life for various petty crimes. Most of the other guys suspected he was probably skimming from the cash register and running several scams in the garage, but he could take apart a transmission faster than anyone James had ever seen, so the boss left him alone and everyone else could just lump it.

Weasel wandered in just as James was getting ready to give up hope and revert to Plan B (what Plan B was, he wasn't sure, so it was great that Weasel showed up when he did). He motioned him over, and Weasel came along easily enough—he had always been a little bit afraid of James, who was much bigger than he was and known for being moody.

"Your car okay, Jimmy?" he asked, his voice slick and oily as always.

James winced; he hated, _hated_, being called Jimmy, which Weasel knew but called him anyway, kind of like a child who deliberately walks past a mean, aggressive dog as long as the dog is on a chain. "Car's fine," he muttered. "I need to ask you something…" and he explained what he wanted.

Weasel stared at him when he was finished speaking, and then let loose with a loud whoop of glee. "Seriously, Jimmy? You really want that?"

"Shut UP!" James hissed, fighting the urge to hit him with a wrench. "Do you have it or not?"

"Yeah, I got it, you want it now?" Weasel spoke more quietly but with undisguised mirth in his voice. "Damn, Jimmy, back in the game already?"

"I want it now," James muttered, ignoring Weasel's implied suggestions. "How much?"

"Twenty bucks, normal, but for you, fifteen," Weasel said cheerfully. "I'll go get it now," and he slouched off.

James ignored the curious glances from the other guys; it was a well-known fact that he and Weasel didn't get along, and this sudden comradely behavior had attracted a fair share of attention when all James wanted was to get what he needed and get out of there. He closed the Jeep's hood and leaned on the driver's side door, wondering anxiously what was taking Weasel so long.

After what seemed like forever, Weasel sauntered back over and handed James what he wanted. James paid him and had the Jeep's door open when Weasel pointed at his arm and asked, "Already back in the scene, then?"

He was pointing at the dark marks on James's arm, left behind from the scarcely healed rug-burns. "Too feisty for you, huh?" Weasel asked, grinning lecherously. "Teenagers these days, don't know their place, am I right?"

James stared at him, completely baffled. "What?"

"You know," Weasel smirked. "That fine piece of ass you've got living with you."

"Heather?" Comprehension slowly started to dawn on him, and he felt his gut clench with the beginnings of a sudden, blind rage.

"Yeah, her!" Weasel leaned in and elbowed James in the ribs. "Not your kid, right? So what's stopping you now?"

One minute Weasel was standing there grinning at him, and the next he was sprawled on the garage's dirty pavement, spitting blood and teeth out from his ravaged mouth. James stood over him, the knuckles on his right hand scraped and stinging, his vision nearly obscured by a red haze.

"What the fuck's wrong with you, man?" Weasel shouted, his words mushy and indistinct around his broken teeth.

James crouched and got right in his face; Weasel scooted backwards across the pavement, trying to get away from him. "You sick, greasy little fuck," James snarled. "I should break your jaw." He grabbed Weasel's wrist and bore down on it, making the other man gasp and twist in his grip.

"James, knock it off!" Hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him off Weasel. The other guys in the shop had decided to get involved. Paulie, the boss, stormed out from his office, shooting daggers from his eyes and spewing profanity.

It all seemed like it was very far away. James shook the other men's hands off him and climbed into the Jeep, feeling like he was moving very slowly, like it was all a dream. He had the Jeep started and was getting ready to pull away when Paulie slammed his fist on the vehicle's window. James turned to him, barely registering what was going on.

"You're done here, Sunderland!" Paulie roared. "Keep away from my shop, you crazy fuck!"

James nodded once and pulled away. He had what he needed; he would never have to go back to the garage again.

**2.**

J.D. slunk back in about a half hour ago, trying to hide his bleeding hand from me. He said something about scratching it up at the shop and then retreated to the basement after telling me that he would wash it out in the sink down there.

I don't believe him; he has that look in his eyes that he gets when he's been doing something he's not supposed to, but I'm too busy to push the issue. He wants to go hide in the basement, fine, I've got too much to do to worry about it.

Knowing that I'm going back to that place, willingly even, makes me sick to my stomach, but at least this time I have a chance to pack and get ready. I wish we had some guns in the house, but Dad would have never agreed to that, so I'm rounding up whatever else could be used as a weapon or as support. I already raided the basement and the garage, taking a bunch of J.D.'s tools, which would normally make him furious but he's too out of it right now to care. Besides, he'll be glad to have them once we're in that place again.

I was sitting on the couch, nervous and fidgeting, when J.D. finally emerged from the basement. He had changed his clothes, wearing that old, ratty green jacket that he'd had for as long as I'd known him, and he had, true to his word, washed off his bloody hand. He was holding two Red Bulls and handed one to me.

"Drink this," he instructed. "It'll take all night to drive there and we'll have to take turns."

I obediently took the can, although I was completely convinced that sleep would be an impossibility tonight. I still thought J.D.'s plan was crazy, but there was a worm of hope in the pit of my stomach, a distracted, plaintive yearning that maybe he was right and we were going off to find Dad. "I made two packs," I told him, chattering nervously. "There's first-aid kits in both of them, and health drinks and some beef jerky and a bunch of other stuff we might need." I handed him the larger, heavier one, and he shrugged into it like it only weighed a couple of ounces. I could barely pick up the damn thing. "There's some weapons in the garage, pipes and wrenches and stuff, we'll have to look for guns and ammo once we get there, and there's a pocket radio in both the packs, and…"

"Drink your Red Bull."

"What?" I took a distracted sip and kept talking. The drink tasted a little off, but those things taste like crap anyway. "We can get a map from a gas station on the highway, since I couldn't find a good one. I printed one out from Google Maps but you know how unreliable those can be, and…"

"Little Bit." J.D. put his hands on my shoulders and I stopped mid-sentence. "Take a breath, drink your Red Bull, and calm down. You aren't going to be any help if you're this wound up."

I drained the can, more to make him shut up than anything else, and continued telling him about my plans. "It's not hard to find guns there, so we should keep our eyes open for them as soon as we get there. I figure that I'll take the handguns and you can take the bigger ones, I can't handle the kick from anything big very well, and…" I stopped and blinked my eyes several times. The edges of things were starting to get fuzzy, starting to blur in and out like I was underwater.

J.D. gently squeezed my shoulders. "Go on, Little Bit. Tell me more about the guns."

I swallowed; my throat was suddenly very dry. "There's a bunch of pockets in the packs for ammunition, and I thought maybe we could stop at that one Wal-Mart on the way, get some bullets… you don't need a permit to buy bullets and you… you don't have to wait…" I was suddenly having trouble keeping my balance. I could feel myself swaying back and forth, and the whole room looked like it was underwater now, all blurry and ripply, and my voice sounded slurred and far away.

"I… I think I'm sick, J.D…." and then I was toppling forward, unable to stand up any longer.

J.D. caught me easily and lifted me into the air. My limbs felt all loose and disjointed, like they belonged to someone else, and I couldn't focus my eyes anymore, and my head was pounding like a runaway electric drumbeat. J.D. carried me into my bedroom and gently laid me on my bed.

What the hell was he doing, why was he so calm about this? Why wasn't he taking me to a doctor, trying to figure out what was wrong with me?

He took my boots off and pulled a blanket up to my chin, then sat on the edge of the bed for a minute. "I'm sorry, Little Bit," he said, and his voice echoed and rolled from somewhere much more distant than the edge of my bed. "Your father would never forgive me if I let you go back to that place." He kissed my forehead and left the room, turning off the light as he went.

I fought the darkness that was creeping into the edges of my vision for as long as I could, tried to force my muscles to work, to obey me, but it was a losing battle. The blackness swept over me and I cascaded into an empty, dreamless sleep.

**3.**

He was off, driving by himself through the night. Occasionally another car passed him and its headlights flooded the Jeep's cab with bright light, but beyond these rare occurrences, he had the road to himself, and it was lit only by the pregnant, nearly full moon and his own headlights.

He was going back. He was going to find him, or lose himself trying.

**4.**

He woke up with a jerk, like someone had slapped him across the face and forced him from his deep sleep. Sitting up, he looked around him, confused.

It was an anonymous room, a hotel room like any other. One lamp burned on the nightstand, making shadows dance across the walls. A book lay next to the lamp, a scrap of paper marking a spot about halfway through.

"Where the hell am I?" Harry asked the darkness, and only the dancing shadows answered.


	5. Chapter 5

**1.**

He got there early, just as the sun was starting to rise over the lake. The ripples on the water caught the sun's rays and glimmered gently, and sparse, fragmented mist floated across the surface of the water.

James parked the Jeep at the rest area on the bluff, the same place he had parked the last time he had visited Silent Hill, and got out of the vehicle to stretch out the kinks in his legs and back. He walked to the railing and looked down at the sleeping town.

It looked so normal, like a typical, drowsy tourist town, the kind of place elderly people retire to so they can tempt their grandchildren into visiting with promises of days spent in the lake. He could imagine the streets filled with old ladies in bright hats, shopping and gossiping while their husbands spent the lazy afternoons at the golf course or playing poker over brandy and beer.

But he could also see the streets filled with monsters and blood.

James shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind. The duality of Silent Hill didn't interest him, not really; all he cared about was finding Harry, if he was down there at all. If he wasn't… well, the world would keep turning if he lost himself down there, and hardly anyone would notice his absence, just like no one would have noticed last time.

His hands tightened involuntarily on the guard rail. Even after ten years, he had never been completely honest with Harry. He stared out at the water, temporarily mesmerized by the slow ripples, and wondered about his car, at the bottom of the lake these past ten years. He had driven off the bridge on purpose. He had wanted to sink into the lake's dark embrace, to sink into peace and oblivion, to finally silence the voices in his head and lose the tremendous weight on his soul. It was only after Harry, a complete stranger at that point, had pulled him out of the water and taken him home that James had started to believe that he did want to live and that he could go on. That he could carry the weight of what he'd done with him and keep living, maybe even be happy again.

And now Harry was gone, and he couldn't help but wonder about what it was like at the bottom of the lake, surrounded by silence and cold, drifting water.

James rubbed his eyes, his red, dry, infuriating eyes, and walked stiffly back to the Jeep. The long drive here felt like a dream now, but he should have been thinking about how to get into the world behind the mask of a quiet tourist town. He hadn't even considered what he would do if he got here and, like it was now, the town was normal, peaceful, and not the nightmare realm he needed to find.

Could he really be so healed that the real Silent Hill wouldn't admit him?

No, that wasn't possible. The red pyramid thing wouldn't be coming to him every night, haunting his dreams, if he couldn't return to that place.

James tilted the Jeep's seat back, trying to find a comfortable position. He might as well take a nap, and maybe when he woke up the fog would be back, and he could descend into the town and find what he was looking for. The monsters would probably eat him alive if he went down there now, sleep-deprived and muzzy-headed as he felt.

The seat caught on something behind him and wouldn't go down all the way. Suddenly and irrationally frustrated, James flailed behind him, trying to push whatever was in the way aside. His hand felt rough canvas and unyielding material; it was the pack Heather had made him. Feeling a momentary stab of guilt for what he had done to her, he felt around for one of the pack's straps and yanked it to the side.

The pack tipped over and its top flap, unsecured, opened and dumped several health drinks and a first aid kit onto the Jeep's floor. And something else, something James hadn't seen in years.

Disbelieving, he reached out, grasped the grimy cloth and hauled it to the front seat for a better look.

Mr. Hopper had seen better days. His plush fur, once white, was now a grimy, beaten gray, and he had lost one eye sometime over the last ten years. The remaining black eye seemed to glare at James balefully, accusingly, like the stuffed bunny knew what he had done to his owner and couldn't forgive him for it.

"Damn it, Little Bit," he whispered, staring at the toy. The pack in the back had definitely been packed for him; he had seen Heather try to lift it and while she could, barely, she would never be able to carry it for any long distance. For some reason, she had decided to include the ancient nightmare-fighting toy for him, like it was just as essential as the bullets and health drinks she had so carefully sorted and mulled over.

He blinked a few times; sleep was tugging at him, and maybe if the pyramid thing visited his dreams, like he knew it would, he would wake up and the town before him would have changed.

Deciding that he didn't care what anyone passing by might think of him, he tilted the seat back the rest of the way and, with Mr. Hopper sprawled across his chest, James fell asleep.

**2.**

I woke up with the worst cotton-mouth of my life, a pounding headache, and one thought running through my head like a mantra.

I'm going to kill him.

The monsters in that place better not get him first, because I am going to kill J.D. for leaving me behind.

I tried to get out of bed and nearly lost my balance, coming within a few inches of crashing onto the floor. That damn roofie must have messed with my head something fierce, because the room is spinning in front of me and the early morning light on the walls looks like a strobe light in a skeezy club.

I told him I needed him, I told him right to his face, and the son of a bitch didn't believe me! He didn't believe me and instead took off like a one-man army to face that place and he actually expects me to stay at home like a good little girl while the most important person I have left in my life starts a suicide mission! For just a moment, I feel a little sympathy for Dad, having to deal with the ball of contradictions and neediness that is J.D.; honestly, I have no idea how he put up with it, because the man betrays me once and I'm ready to rip his head off with my bare hands.

Okay, my vision was starting to clear, and I thought I could give standing up another try. I just wished I could move my tongue away from the roof of my mouth; it's stuck there like I drank a cocktail of Red Bull and Super Glue last night.

I tried to stand up and promptly lost my balance, for real this time, and crashed backwards onto the bed. Obviously, I was going to have to wait this out, wait for the drug to work its way through my system, which it better do fast, because I had a long day ahead of me. Judging by the light on the walls, it was sometime in the early morning. I had slept through the night, meaning J.D. had several hours head-start, and if I was going to deliver the righteous ass-kicking I had planned, I had a lot of catching up to do.

I glanced up at my nightstand, the motion making my head pound, trying to see the clock. There was a bottle of water sitting next to the clock, the cap already off. I knew I hadn't left it there last night, I had gathered up all the bottled water we had in the house and packed it for our journey to that place. J.D. must have left it there for me.

I nearly spilled it all over myself (my hands were so awkward!) but I managed to get it to my mouth with minimal sloppage. I guzzled the entire thing in one go, chasing away the cotton-mouth and actually clearing my head a little. I leaned back on the bed and waited for the rest of the weirdness to go away. At least I could use this time to figure out my next move.

**3.**

He woke up cold and shivering, and somewhere in the distance, he could hear water dripping.

James sat up abruptly, so fast that he nearly whacked his forehead of the Jeep's steering wheel. Mr. Hopper soared off his chest, hit the windshield, and slumped onto the dashboard in a sad little heap. He looked out of the car with bleary, sleep-heavy eyes, and he saw a world changed.

The fog was back. He watched it wind and curl around the Jeep, caressing the windshield wipers and curling around the radio antenna; it was almost like watching a living thing, a small, dangerous creature that hides its intent behind a sweet, harmless exterior. He squinted and looked out towards the town, and saw that it was completely hidden by the undulating, roiling grey fog.

James tugged his jacket closer around his body. The fog was cold, turning the clock forward from a warm early summer's day to a chilly, damp November evening, the kind of evening when you can taste snow in the air and know that worse weather is on the way. The fog also had a strange dampening effect on sound, making everything sound muffled and far away. He took a moment to listen, and he couldn't hear any birds singing, or cars on the road behind him, or people talking, or anything… only the gentle lap of waves along the lake's shoreline, and the sound of water dripping, somewhere far away.

He reached out and turned the Jeep's key to Accessory, then flipped on the radio.

Nothing. James carefully dialed through the stations, taking his time. For where he was, he should have been picking up radio stations from all over the state, and some from Canada, but all he got was the occasional burst of static or white noise. Otherwise, the radio was just a smooth band of silence. No voices, no music, just emptiness.

He got to the end of the FM stations, switched to AM, and repeated the process. While the FM broadcast had at least had some static, the AM band was completely dead, no activity at all. This didn't surprise him, but it did make him feel even more alone.

Then, towards the end of the AM band, the radio came to life under his fingers with a snarl of static, startling him so badly that he pulled his hand away like the machine had suddenly grown teeth and tried to bite him. The radio hissed and growled, the white noise rising and falling in abrupt crescendos and decrescendos.

James laughed weakly, chiding himself at being startled so badly by a mechanical fluke, even as the little voice in the back of his head warned him that there were no mechanical flukes in Silent Hill—the radio was working because this place wanted it to work, no other reason. Even as he moved to turn it off, he paused for a moment and let his eyes sweep the parking lot, searching for one of the things to lurch towards him out of the fog. "I'm coming for you, Harry," he said quietly, not sure who or what he was speaking to.

The radio gave one particularly loud squawk, and then a human voice drifted through the static.

"…James…? … where… you… James?"

He froze. He knew that voice, had heard it every day for the last ten years, had heard it say his name in anger, in amusement, in exasperation… but mostly in love. "Harry?" he whispered, turning his head to look at the radio, hearing the tendons in his neck creak from the tension.

"… lost… what… James… you?" The voice drifted in and out, sometimes nearly obscured by static, and James frantically turned up the volume on the radio until the white noise was a dull roar inside the Jeep's cab. Even as the static got louder, the lonely, tinny little human voice seemed to fade away, slipping in-between the radio frequencies until it was like listening to the memory of a voice.

"… James…"

"Harry," James breathed, his hands on either side of the radio, leaning in as close as he could get, until his forehead touched the dashboard. "Where are you?"

The radio snapped itself off, the click echoing with finality throughout the Jeep's cab.

James sat back, breathing deeply, staring at the now-silent radio. He knew he could try to turn it on again, could take it apart and put it back together, could redesign the Jeep's entire engine around making it work… and the radio would still sit there, as voiceless as a stone. This place had let him hear all he was meant to hear, and no force on Earth (or beyond) could make the radio speak again.

"You're here, aren't you?" he said to himself, still looking at the radio. "I was right, you're here somewhere."

The radio stared back at him, and if it knew any secrets, it kept them to itself.


	6. Chapter 6

**1.**

Where was he?

If he had ever seen this room before, he had forgotten it long ago. It was just a typical hotel room, plainly decorated and clearly catering to the lowest common denominator. He knew without looking that there'd be a tattered copy of the Gideon Bible in one of the nightstand's drawers, that the lights in the bathroom would be too harsh and create ugly shadows where there should be none, that if he had a black-light bulb he would find all sorts of stains scattered across the room in lonely splatters. He knew this room, but at the same time, he didn't.

Harry rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his head. A tiny headache yipped and bit at the back of his eyes, and he was a little thirsty, but other than that, he felt okay. Tired, maybe, like he hadn't slept long enough, and the room was too cold, but okay. Normal.

He just had no idea where he was or how he got there.

Harry stood up and wandered to the room's bathroom, trying to piece together what had happened. His mind, usually sharp, felt slow and sluggish, like it was wrapped in a layer of gauze, or like he had been drugged without knowing it. While he wouldn't put it past James to come up with some kind of elaborate scenario like this, he also trusted him to inform him ahead of time, and he also thought that James would at least choose a less-depressing locale. He would at least choose a hotel with windows.

He paused. Why did that bother him? Every hotel room he had ever been in had had at least one window, and this one had none. Strange, and unsettling, although he wasn't sure exactly why.

Harry got to the bathroom, turned on the predictably unflattering lights, and used the rusty sink to draw a glass of water in a stained coffee cup. As he drank, he thought back to the last things he remembered, trying to piece together what had happened.

It had been a pretty, early summer afternoon. Heather had left to go to the mall; he had thought about saying something about the length of her skirt but then decided against it; she would be going to college in the fall and now was a good time to start practicing letting go. He had been in the living room, putting some final touches on a recent chapter, when James had come in from mowing the lawn, sweaty and covered with grass clippings. James had then come up with a few activities (and he felt himself flushing with the memory) that had left both Harry and their sheets sweaty and also covered in sweet-smelling grass clippings. After getting cleaned up, James had kissed him goodbye and left for his wood-working class at the Learning Annex, leaving Harry to enjoy a rare evening by himself.

Drinking his third cup of water, Harry's mind lazily circled around, trying to remember what he had done that evening. He had finished his work on the computer, and had been relaxing in his beat-up old chair, relishing a chance to read without interruptions, when…

His eyes went wide as his mind suddenly came fully awake and alive with the memory, and his hand involuntarily rioted in a spasm. The stained coffee cup tumbled into the sink and cracked into three pieces with a sound like a gunshot.

He fumbled with the bottom of his shirt, his hands numb and not obeying his commands. He tugged the shirt up to his collarbone, staring into the mirror in front of him so hard that his eyes bulged in their sockets. As the shirt pulled reluctantly away from his skin and began to bunch under his chin, he so expected to see the stab wounds that for a moment he really did see them, two wide, lipless, deep gashes in the pallid skin of his chest.

And then nothing, nothing but a smooth expanse of unblemished skin, the only scar marring it one from a lost battle with appendicitis nearly forty years past. Unbelieving, Harry reached up with one shaking hand and gently felt along his chest and stomach, expecting his fingers to sink into a hidden wound at any moment. Still nothing, not even a scar from what must have been a hideous, fatal injury.

Fatal. That monster, with its daggers for hands… how could that thing have stabbed him and not left any scars behind? Moreover, how did he survive getting stabbed not once, but twice, by that thing, and wake up completely unharmed?

Harry studied his face in the mirror, slowly letting his shirt drop. The fluorescent lights bleached his skin to an unnatural, ghostly pallor, and accented the silvery swirls at his temples while making the rest of his hair, normally shiny and healthy, look like dark, dead hay. His eyes were a little bloodshot, and too wide and staring, but at least they were alert and present. He had the beginnings of a beard across the lower half of his face, blurring his jawline, and he noticed the grey that was starting to thread through his facial hair as well. He didn't look any different that he remembered looking.

From somewhere in the other room, a radio started to buzz with static.

Harry ran out of the bathroom in great, shambling strides, looking around frantically for the source of the sound. On the table, near the door, a small pocket radio sat, whirring to itself and whispering with static.

Harry felt his blood run cold in his veins; he knew that radio, recognized it, even though he hadn't seen it in seventeen years. He remembered a dim, black time when his life had depended on that radio, and he also remembered throwing it away when he left that place for the last time, tossing it behind him without a second glance. And now it was back, buzzing importantly and demanding his attention, as if it had all the right in the world to intrude back on his life.

He picked it up with nerveless fingers, nearly dropping it, and then carefully turned up the volume.

Static assaulted his ears, strident and shrieking in the enclosed space, and he glanced over his shoulder instinctually, half-expecting to see one of those short, childlike things that weren't children creeping towards him out of the shadows.

The hotel room was empty, and he felt it looking back at him with impassive, blank eyes.

"… Harry…"

This time he really did drop the radio, and it bounced and skittered across the tabletop, nearly falling to the floor. Clumsily, he scooped it back up and held it close to his face, frantically listening for that voice, that small, lost voice that he knew as well as he knew his own.

"James?" he mouthed, speaking so quietly that he could hardly hear himself. "Where are you, James?"

The radio hissed, and a new voice floated in through the static, and his heart broke to hear it. If there was something, anything he could still wish for, it was that she wouldn't get caught up in this madness.

"… Daddy?... that you…"

He shook his head, closing his eyes and trying to get control of himself. Why? Why did that place have to drag her into it?

"Heather," he said, speaking directly into the radio, not knowing what it would allow through, what she would hear on the other end. "Are you lost? Is James with you?"

"Daddy!" Even through the static, he could hear her joy, and he wanted to weep for it. Then, on the heels of Heather's voice, he heard James's voice again, and this time the radio was clear, all the static gone.

"Harry, where are you?"

"Stay away!" he cried, suddenly sick with worry and fright. "Don't come after me, James! I'll find you!"

The radio clicked off in his hand.

Harry collapsed on the bed, his head in his hands and the now-silent radio on the sheet next to him. He knew where he was now.

**2.**

I woke up to a loud snarl of radio static coming from the basement.

I leapt out of bed, nearly losing my balance and falling again, and started running towards J.D.'s workshop. For reasons that I didn't understand until I visited that place myself, and now understood all too well, both Dad and J.D. hated radios and didn't want them in the house. The one exception was the antique radio that J.D. kept in the basement and took apart whenever he was thinking hard about something. It was one of the only personal things in the house that J.D. had brought with him from his life before us. When I was a kid, I used to think that he had just appeared, fully formed, to make my dad happy and that he didn't have a past. By the time I was old enough to realize that was ridiculous and ask him about it, he had spent so much time forgetting that it was painful for both of us to make him dredge up those old memories, and I dropped it after only one attempt.

Now his radio had turned itself on and was making noise, and I knew enough about that place now to know that it wasn't a coincidence.

The radio was sitting on his workbench, reassembled from the last time it had been taken apart. The light on the front (the light that J.D. had to search harder and harder to find replacement bulbs for) was on, and it was spitting static. The static was loud, too, louder than I thought the old radio was capable of, since before it had always picked up stations weakly and sound drifted in and out. Now, though, it was projecting noisily and enthusiastically.

I sat down across from it and turned the volume down a little, since the blaring static was making my head pound again. "So why are you on, huh?" I asked it. "Why'd you wake me up?"

I didn't expect an answer, and was already reaching to turn it off when a voice slipped through the static.

"…Harry…"

I leaned in close, recognizing J.D.'s voice. Half of me wanted to run away screaming from the possessed radio, but the other half of me was getting really used to weird shit, and a radio that turns itself on was pretty low on my list of Scary Things at the moment. Maybe I'm more J.D.'s daughter than I'd like to admit after all.

It was the next voice that came from the radio that made my mouth fall open and my eyes well up with tears. It glided in under the static and under J.D.'s, but it was a voice I had been trying so hard to remember, to not forget, that I recognized it instantly.

"…you, James?"

"Daddy? Is that you?" I asked, not wanting to believe while at the same time hoping desperately.

And then I was lost, completely and totally committed to J.D.'s crazy scheme, not even really mad at him anymore for leaving me behind. I was lost the moment I heard my dad's voice say my name one last time, even if it was distant and distorted through the ancient radio.

"…Heather…"

"Daddy!" I couldn't help myself; I grabbed the radio with both hands and pulled it close to my face, staring hungrily at it, like I expected my dad to materialize out of it. I was crying again, and my tears splashed across the radio's dial and stained its wooden varnish. "Daddy, you're okay! Where are you?"

J.D.'s voice drifted in again, and I wondered if he was hearing the same things I was on a different radio. "…where… you?"

Then Dad's voice again, panicky now. "…away… come after me… find you…"

And the radio, as suddenly as it had turned itself on, clicked off.

I don't know how long I stayed in the basement; long enough for my tears to dry and my racing mind to slow down a little, at least. Long enough for me to come to three conclusions: one, J.D. wasn't crazy after all; two, my dad was still out there, somewhere; and three, radios were acting really strangely in three different locations, and there was only one place that came to mind where radios did that.

I tucked the antique radio under my arm, choosing to ignore the fact that it was unplugged, and started up the stairs. Where my two dads were, I needed to be, and God help anyone who got in my way.


	7. Chapter 7

**1.**

I got there just as twilight was starting to paint its grey fingers across the sky.

I recognized Dad's Jeep in the parking lot above the town, and I pulled in next to it and turned off my Yaris with a sigh. The drive had taken longer than I thought it would, especially since I got lost about four times. I'm crap with directions, I really am, Google Maps be damned, and going back into that place really scares me because I know I'll have to use maps and I suck at that and I don't want to be here and…

Stop it. Stop it, Heather! Your dads are down there somewhere, you heard it on J.D.'s radio, now either nut up or shut up!

Done giving myself a pep talk, I got out of my car and went over to inspect the Jeep.

The pack I'd made J.D. was gone, and I felt some grim satisfaction knowing that he'd taken it with him. I wondered if he'd found Mr. Hopper yet, and if he had, what his reaction had been. I don't know why I put that stupid old toy in there, I swear I don't, but something just told me that it would be a good idea. Besides, it's not like he's heavy; I was certain J.D. could schlep his two or three ounce weight for days if he had to.

Now that was weird. The Jeep's stereo was gone, leaving an empty space in the dashboard that bled wires out into the cab. At first I thought someone had stolen it, gouged it out with a screwdriver, judging by the scratches around the hole, but why would they? Hardly anyone has CD/radio combos in their cars anymore, even my goofy little Yaris has an iPod adaptor…

And then it hit me. The radio. J.D. had taken it for the radio.

I rested my forehead on the Jeep's cool window, fighting back tears. So it really had happened; I really had heard Dad and J.D.'s voices over the radio, and Dad at least had heard me, and J.D. had heard Dad, and I wasn't an idiot for rearranging my pack to fit that huge antique radio into it. Somehow, the radios had connected us, and if it had worked once, it might work again. It had to work again.

I left the Jeep behind and went back to my car. I got out my own pack, shrugged it on, made sure I could reach the old radio at a moment's notice if I had to, and walked out to the railing above the lake.

The town looked so normal from up here. If I squinted, I could even make out tiny people walking on the streets, wearing the brightly colored garb that only out-of-state tourists would be caught dead in. It was a still evening, and I could hear voices drifting up to me, although I couldn't make out the words, only the sound. That should have been creepy, but it was somehow reassuringly human. I heard a boat's motor out on the lake somewhere, and church bells ringing from down in the town, and kids laughing far away. If I closed my eyes, I could even catch a whiff of someone's barbeque.

I opened my eyes and glared down at this peaceful little tourist village. My dads weren't down there. They were in that other place, the place behind this one. This little town was the mask, and the nightmare was the capering reality hiding behind it.

I spread my arms wide, leaned into the railing, and shouted "You want me so damn bad? Come and fucking get me!"

For just a second, it seemed like time stopped, and I felt a momentary stab of fear that I wouldn't be able to get in and find Dad and J.D., and that fear was worse than any I'd ever felt before. Then, in the middle of the lake, fog started roiling up and out, enveloping the town and stretching towards me like eager hands, seeking me out and wrapping its icy tendrils around me. The peaceful, normal sounds and smells disappeared, replaced by a silence that wasn't really silent but only a cover to hide the things slinking around underneath it and a smell like a dampened bonfire fed by bones.

I breathed deeply, taking that place into me, feeling it down through every fiber of my being. For better or for worse, I was here now, and I had one idiot and one ghost to find.

I shifted my pack around so the radio was close and I yelled into its blank face "I'm here now! I'm coming to find you!" I waited for a response, but the radio stared back at me with its dull, empty eyes, much like I suspected it would. I got my pack back into position and started down the hill towards Silent Hill.

**2.**

This wasn't right.

Not that anything about this place ever had been right, or ever would be, but this was… more not right than he had suspected. Of course, he also remembered his own death, so maybe his suspicions about what was right and what wasn't could be called into question, but still… even for this place that had haunted and cursed his life for years, this wasn't right.

Harry roamed aimlessly through the still, fog-shrouded town. The small radio nestled in his jacket pocket (and was he really surprised that his old leather bomber jacket had been hanging in the hotel room's closet? No, no, he was not), its weight somehow comforting, and even though he hadn't found any weapons, he hadn't needed them. He hadn't seen a single thing, monster or otherwise, lurking in the fog, and that was what was so disconcerting. He remembered those damn bird things and those skinless dogs well enough, had been visited by them in his nightmares for almost two decades, and he had left the hotel cringing, expected to be dive-bombed almost immediately.

And nothing. He was completely alone, walking undisturbed and unmolested, but shrinking away from shadows, expecting the worst at every corner.

Not for the first time, Harry wondered if he was in Hell.

He kept waiting for the radio, hoping against hope that it would snarl with static again and he'd hear another voice in this vast emptiness, James or Heather or someone, anyone, but at the same time afraid of what might be at the other end.

He must have been walking for a long time, possibly hours although it only felt like minutes, because he was on the other side of the lake, across from the hotel. Remembering that this was the border of the town, close to the highway, he sped up a little, knowing it would never be this easy but desperately wishing it could be. Keeping the lakeshore to one side, he walked through the park and into the cemetery.

The fog was thicker here, heavy and dense and nearly solid around him, and he strained to see more than a few feet ahead of him. This place had seen fit to provide him with a radio but not a flashlight, and he narrowly avoided colliding with several tombstones until, while ducking under a large stone angel, he caught a shorter grave with his shin and went sprawling, face-first, into the wet grass.

"Dammit!" he cursed aloud, sitting up and rubbing the offending shin, feeling dampness seep through his jeans and chill his skin.

"You shouldn't run into them," a dreamy, quiet voice he had never heard before said. "They don't like it when you run into them."

He peered into the fog, not trusting his ears in this horrible place. "Where are you?" he asked, fighting to keep his voice calm. "I can't see you."

"Right in front of you. Look harder."

Rising to his feet, he walked, slowly, a few steps towards the voice. In his experience, the monsters here didn't talk, and even if they did, he didn't imagine they would sound as sad and world-weary as this voice did. The fog parted after a few steps, and he saw a young woman sitting on the ground near one of the graves, her back to him.

She looked like she was about Heather's age, but something about her posture and her voice made her seem much, much older. Beads of condensation clung to her white sweater and black hair, making her look as if she'd adorned herself with many tiny, sparkling crystals. She was rocking back and forth, deliberately, and staring intently at the name on the grave, a name that Harry couldn't make out in the uncertain light.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She turned her head, took one look at him, and leapt to her feet, shrieking. "Get away from me!" she screamed, stumbled awkwardly away from him so that the tombstone was between them. "I took care of you, you can't hurt me anymore!"

Very slowly, Harry held up both hands, palms open and facing her. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said in a voice that he hoped was reassuring. "I'm wondering if you can help me."

She stared at him suspiciously, brushing her dark bangs out of her eyes to get a better look at him, her posture radiating tension and fright. She reminded him of a deer caught in the headlights, an animal that knows on some level that it must run but can't get the message down to its legs. After watching him for a few minutes, she relaxed, a little, some of the tightness leaving her muscles.

"You're too tall," she told him, and he thought that she sounded almost disappointed. "You're not him, you're taller than he is, and your hair is the wrong color."

He smiled slowly, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible. "What's your name?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she walked around the grave and resumed her position in front of it, staring into the tombstone like it held all the mysteries of the world.

He tried again. "I think I'm a little lost. Do you know a way out of here?"

She made a gesture off into the distance, her white hand seeming to float and dance through the fog. "Up that hill. There's a parking lot." She thought for a moment, then turned around and looked at him questioningly. "Are you one of the new people?"

"New people?" he asked, confused.

She jerked her head in the direction she had pointed. "Two new cars up there." She shrugged. "I thought maybe one of them was yours."

"No." He shook his head. "I didn't drive here."

She turned back to the stone, dismissing him. "No one does anymore."

Giving her a wide berth, Harry went off in the direction she had indicated.


	8. Chapter 8

**1.**

The fog was heavier on the hill, and a few times he almost lost his footing and tumbled down into the lake. Glad that James wasn't there to see him, Harry knelt down and used his hands for leverage on some of the steepest areas. The earth was cold and moist under his hands.

When he finally crested the hill and caught site of the parking lot, his heart sank. His own Jeep sat parked on the railing, looking abandoned and forlorn, and Heather's little Yaris was next to it, parked so close it appeared to be leaning into the larger vehicle.

"Why?" he whispered, walking towards the two cars. "Why are you here?"

He touched the car's hoods, first the Jeep and then the Yaris; they were both cold, the engines beneath them having been turned off long ago. Condensation had beaded water droplets all over them, and as he watched, the droplets ran downwards, off the metal, chasing after each other like gravity's ghosts.

They drove separately. Why hadn't they come together? Why had they come at all? How did Heather know how to get here, unless… unless this place had called her too?

Harry moaned deep in his throat, and anyone who might have been listening would have thought they were hearing a lost animal, one that is far away from home and afraid.

He had no idea how long he stood there, leaning against the Jeep and missing them, missing his family so badly that it was a physical pain, a longing so powerful that he lost control of his limbs and couldn't move. Eventually, though, he got control of himself again as his mind, always so nimble and quick, began processing through the grief and trying to figure out the next move.

Leaving the vehicles behind (trying unsuccessfully to ignore the lump that had risen in his throat when he noticed a college sweatshirt, crumpled and casually forgotten, in the Yaris's backseat), Harry started walking again, this time out of the parking lot and towards the highway.

The fog immediately got heavier, wrapping him in a thick blanket of whiteness, completely obscuring his vision. He walked slowly, feeling out ahead of him with his hands and dragging his feet across the ground; he hadn't forgotten the vast pits that opened up along the roads out of town when this place didn't want you to leave. The fog coiled around him, tugging at him with white fingers and weighing him down as his clothing grew heavy with moisture, and he suddenly had the oddest sensation that he was becoming part of it. He felt like he was dissipating, his body's atoms drifting apart from each other and joining the swirling, sound-dampening fog. It wasn't a bad feeling, exactly, not painful or traumatic, and for a moment he wondered what it would be like to just drift apart and be gone, lost forever in the thick, timeless emptiness. Harry stopped walking and closed his eyes, feeling the pull towards nothingness, a pull that felt right somehow, and he felt only a touch of sadness that he would never see Heather again, Heather whose face was already sliding away from him with the mist.

Or James. James's face flashed across his mind's eye; not the present James, but James as he had first met him, abandoned and alone, physically younger but aged with grief, wanting a way out but unable to find one on his own. James, who had needed someone so badly without even realizing it; James, who had saved him and given him his life back; James, who had made him remember what life could be instead of dwelling on what it wasn't.

He remembered. He remembered everything, and in remembering, Harry was pulled back into himself with a jolt so powerful it felt almost physical, nearly painful.

He put his hands to his face, grinding his teeth together, and whispered in a mantra, "My name is Harry Mason, my daughter is Heather Mason and I love James Sunderland. My name is Harry Mason, my daughter is Heather Mason and I love James Sunderland. My name is Harry Mason…"

When he opened his eyes again, the fog had pulled back and was swirling slowly around his feet again, and he was standing next to the tall stone angel he had nearly collided with earlier. He looked around, blinking, and the graveyard slowly came into focus.

"It won't let you leave."

He jumped; the young woman in the white sweater was standing nearby, watching him with her dark, fathomless eyes.

"The borders are farther away now," she said conversationally, when he didn't immediately respond. "They're drifting, only it's more like reaching. It's calling, calling… others…" Her voice tapered off, and she gazed off into the distance, at a point somewhere behind his shoulder.

"This place… it's getting stronger?" he asked her.

She nodded, her eyes out of focus. "Stronger all the time."

"How… how long have you been here?" Harry didn't want to know the answer, but felt like he had to ask.

She shrugged and said simply, "A long time."

They stood in silence for a few moments as Harry tried to process what she was telling him. "Are… are you dead?" he finally asked her.

Her eyes narrowed, and she glared at him, suddenly lucid. "Of course not! Why would you ask that?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

"I will be soon, though," she continued, talking smoothly over his apology, her eyes blank once again. "As soon as it catches me again, I'll be dead. And then I won't be. And then it will chase me some more." She shuddered, crossing her arms over her abdomen and clutching her elbows, trying to make herself look smaller. "It always catches me eventually…"

"What catches you?" he asked, knowing he was needling her now but desperate to know the answer.

"The Butcher."

**2.**

James stopped and listened, swearing he could hear someone calling his name. The voice was tiny and faraway, so distant that it barely sounded human anymore, but he was certain he had heard it. Moreover, he was almost sure that he recognized the voice, that he knew the speaker…

Suddenly frantic, he yanked his pack around on his back and pulled out the radio he had torn from the Jeep's dashboard. The radio trailed wires and bits of chipped plastic, it wasn't connected to any power supply, it didn't even have any speakers—there was no way on earth it should be working, but he nearly shouted for joy when he saw its tiny amber light blinking.

With hands trembling like an old man's, he brought the radio to his ear, hoping against hope that he would hear the voice again.

Coming from the radio, like a tiny echo from the past, he heard Harry's voice, faint and distant, "…my name is Harry Mason, my daughter is Heather Mason and I love James Sunderland…"

James clung to the radio like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver, and pressed it to his ear so hard that it hurt, but Harry's voice faded away and the message wasn't repeated. He waited, feeling the radio's jagged plastic edges dig into his face, but the radio was a cold, lifeless lump again. He slowly lowered it, not surprised that the little amber light was dark.

Harry had said that he loved him.

James heaved a deep, shuddering sigh as he put the radio back into his pack. Ten years together, and he didn't think he'd told Harry how he felt about him more than a handful of times. Maybe even a handful was an overestimate. He had tried to show him, tried to prove to him how he felt, but it had always been hard, so fucking hard, for him to say the three words he knew Harry wanted to hear. He could blame his father, blame Silent Hill, blame whoever and whatever he wanted, but the simple truth was that he was afraid. The only two people he'd ever said those words to more than a few times had died, died young and horribly, and he didn't want his love to curse Harry the same way. James Sunderland's love was a burden, and he'd thought that if he kept Harry free from it, they'd have a lifetime together for him to prove it instead.

Only now, too late, was he realizing what a mistake that had been.


	9. Chapter 9

**1.**

With a single flick of his wrist, as easily as if he were swatting away an errant fly, James lashed out with a long wrench and caved in the monster's head.

The creature staggered and dropped to its knees, still struggling to free its arms from the bindings of its own skin, and he darted in, hitting it across the back and sending it crashing to the ground. Before it had a chance to crawl away, using the horrible, skittering motion these things had when they were on their stomachs, he used one boot heel to finish the job. The monster spasmed and then lay still, pouring blood that looked black in his flashlight's shaking beam.

He examined the end of his wrench in the uncertain light. Blood and bits of skin clung to it in thick clots, and he could already see little dings and dents along its length, wounds put in the metal by constant contact with these abomination's skulls. It was a horrible way to treat a good tool; all the same, he was grateful that Heather had thought to pack it for him.

Heather. The drug must have worn off by now, and she was almost certainly furious with him. Not that he could really blame her; it had been a low trick, spiking her drink and then leaving her behind, but, given enough time, he thought she would understand. He hoped she would.

He realized, with a little start of surprise, that he was thinking about the future. How bizarre, being in this place that bled the past and allowed it to run concurrent with the present, to be thinking about a future, _any_ future, beyond the here and now.

James gritted his teeth and started off again, ignoring the still-bleeding monster. The only future he wanted was one involving Harry, and he wasn't going to find him by standing here and ruminating on the finer details of reality in this place.

He missed him. God, he missed him so damn _bad_. Even this awful place wouldn't be so terrible, so soul-draining, if he had Harry here with him. Someone to watch his back, help him, reassure him that he wasn't going crazy and that this was, in fact, all really happening…

He didn't remember it being this bad when Mary died. God help him, but it just didn't hurt the same way. With Mary, it had been a dull, burning ache, insidious and creeping, always constantly on the back of his mind. This time, the pain assaulted him from all angles, at every turn, vicious and snapping, never letting him forget, even for a moment, all that he had lost. He remembered a story he'd read in school, years ago in some long-forgotten high school classroom, about a Greek god who was punished for his sins by being chained to a rock, and every day birds came and pecked out his organs. The god felt the pain, felt every peck and tear from the birds, but because he was a god he couldn't die and had to suffer the same fate, day after day, until the end of time. That's what this grief felt like—a constant, ragged agony that would never go away, attacking him with every turn of his memories.

If only he'd been home—if only he hadn't gone off and left Harry by himself! The two of them could have fought back, could have destroyed whatever had killed Harry, could have saved his life. Even if they couldn't, even if they were too old to be doing this anymore, they could have died together.

That was what haunted him the most, what made his heart ache with every beat and his mind throb in his skull… he kept picturing Harry, alone and in pain, slowly dying in his chair as his life's blood leaked out all around him. And then Heather finding him, seeing her dad that way, lifeless and broken… why had he chosen to stop at the store on his way home? Why had he gotten a craving for cheese puffs on that night of all nights? He should've been the one to find him, at least, sparing Heather from the horror of finding her father's murdered body.

He squinted into the fog, deliberately pushing the thoughts away. If he was going to survive this, if he was going to find Harry (and probably Heather too, he admitted to himself) and get out of this godforsaken place, he needed to concentrate. He couldn't afford to get distracted by his memories and let one of the things in the fog sneak up on him. So far he had only seen the armless, burned monsters, which were relatively easy to dispatch and even easier to avoid, but he hadn't visited the places where the other monsters lived. He realized, belatedly, that he had been circling the outskirts of the town, traveling in ever-narrower circles, sweeping the area in his search, deliberately avoiding certain places and their horrors. It might not be the fastest way to search, but maybe it would be effective.

James wished, for what seemed like the millionth time, that he and Harry had talked about their separate experiences in this place. If they'd shared what had happened to them, he might have some idea of where Harry was, where he could go to try and find him. As it was, he knew Harry had been here, but he had no idea why or what he had done while in this terrible place. He only had his own memories to go on, and he prayed to a god he no longer believed in that Harry wasn't in the hospital or one of the apartment buildings. The thought of searching through those dark corridors, constantly listening for the scrape of metal being dragged across concrete, dodging the shrieking, twisted nurses, and fumbling with doors that kept their secrets hidden behind rusted locks sent chills running up and down his spine.

He started moving again, staring intently into the swirling, obscuring fog. He could hear the lake somewhere nearby, the waves lapping calmly at the shore, and smell the sharp tang of the water. Up ahead of him, he noticed a dark shape, moving awkwardly through the fog, and he readied his wrench in anticipation.

The shape wasn't moving right. It was a little too agile, too smooth, to be one of the monsters. For one brief, heart-stopping moment, hope leapt up into his throat, and he called out, unable to help himself, "Harry?"

The shape stopped moving at the sound of his voice, and turned towards it. It started moving towards him, all grace gone now, moving in a shambling, ungainly run, and he tightened his grip on the wrench, ready to face whatever new abomination this place had vomited out.

The shape broke through the fog into the dim circle cast by his flashlight, its hands up to shade its eyes from the unexpected light, and James's wrench hit the ground with a loud clatter as it fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers.

"Maria?" he choked.

**2.**

"James!" she cried, her voice thick and heavy with tears and fright, and flung herself towards him. She stumbled a little, her ankle twisting in her high-heeled boot, and collapsed against his chest with surprising force. Instinctually, he brought his arms up to steady her, but when she tried to cling to him he pushed her away, gripping her upper arms and trying to focus the flashlight's beam on her face.

"Oh, James, I was so scared, how could you leave me here, I've been looking for you…" she babbled, but he scarcely heard her. She kept ducking and bobbing her head, not giving him a chance to get a good look at her in the shaking light, until finally, in frustration, he grabbed her chin and held her still. She stopped talking then, and watched him closely from under her blonde bangs as he studied her, not believing what he was seeing.

She looked exactly the same. She hadn't changed at all since the last time he had seen her, short of being alive instead of dead, and she had an irritating way of shifting back and forth between the two poles anyway, so he wasn't sure how much he should take that into consideration. He gaped at her, amazed at finding someone he recognized here, until she reached up and knocked his hand away from her face.

"James," she tried again, her voice (Mary's voice) smoky, all the terror gone, "where have you been? I've been looking for you for a long time."

He shook his head, unable to speak, and let go of her arm.

She plucked some leaves off the sleeve of her sweater, smoothed an imagined wrinkle from where he had touched her, and then reached towards him. He shied away from her touch, fear yammering rapidly in the back of his mind, but she was too quick for him, and brushed his hair back from his forehead, her fingers cold on his skin.

"James," she exclaimed, surprised, "what happened to you? You… you got old." She studied him, her eyes lingering on his greying hair, the fine lines around his eyes and on his forehead, and her eyes suddenly widened. She took several steps back, staring at him, and wrapped her arms around herself, cupping her elbows in her hands. "How… how long have you been gone?" she asked, her voice cracking on the last word.

"A long time," he told her, finding his voice.

"How long?" she demanded, her voice an ugly rasp.

"How long have you been looking for me?" he asked, trying to evade her question.

"I don't know!" she cried miserably. "I keep getting lost, and I lose track of where I am, and how much time has passed, and sometimes those things chase me, and _how long has it been_, James?"

"Ten years," he whispered.

Her eyes filled with tears, and he was reminded so strongly of Heather that he took a step towards her, his arms rising of their own volition to embrace her, to comfort her; she took another step backwards and then slapped him, hard, really throwing her weight into it.

"You left me by myself for ten years?" she shrieked, increasing the ringing in his ears to an unbearable level. "I've been here, alone and scared, for ten fucking years? What were you doing? What could be so important that you'd just leave me here for ten goddamn years?" She started crying in earnest then, tears running down her cheeks in heavy streams, and she ducked her head so that he wouldn't see her. "I thought you loved me," she moaned. "I thought you wouldn't leave me alone…"

"I never loved you," James said quietly.

She stopped crying as abruptly as she'd started, and glared at him through red-rimmed eyes. "How can you say that? Stop lying to me, James, I know you loved me."

He shook his head. "I loved Mary. I never loved you. You're… you're some cheap copy of the woman I loved."

"And you don't love her anymore either?" Maria asked, her voice soft and dangerous. "You just… left and forgot about her?"

"I never forgot about her," he answered, anger starting to rise through his confusion. "I can't go a day without thinking about her at least once, but you… you are not her." He shook his head again, trying to clear it. "You're not the same person."

"I could be," she whispered. "I could be whatever you want me to be."

James closed his eyes; she had said that to him once before, and he had almost believed her. Almost. But now he knew the difference between what she had to offer and what he really wanted, and she didn't have to power to tempt him anymore. Eyes still closed, he turned around so his back was facing her, and, opening his eyes again, started to walk away.

"No, you can't," he said over his shoulder. "You never could be."


	10. Chapter 10

**1.**

He stopped walking so abruptly that she almost ran into him.

"What's the matter?" the dark-haired girl asked, and Harry thought he actually heard some tone of concern wafting through her hazy voice.

Harry listened closely for a moment, then shook his head. "Nothing. I thought I heard something."

"The fog makes things sound different," she offered helpfully, and fell into step behind him again. She had been following him ever since he'd left the cemetery, and the further they went without him turning around and attacking her, the bolder she became, inching closer until she was only a few steps behind him.

"Who are you looking for?" she asked eventually, after they'd wandered through the fog long enough that she had lost most of her fear and was walking beside him.

"Someone… someone very important to me," Harry told her.

"What's their name?"

"What's your name?" Harry countered; resigned to traveling with her, at least for the time being, he wanted something to call her.

"Angela," she answered promptly, surprising him a little. "I used to be looking for someone too," she shared, "but she wasn't here. I got lost instead."

Harry didn't answer, wasn't sure how to answer, and she seemed satisfied with that. She continued to trot along next to him, occasionally humming a little ripple of music that seemed desperately out of place in this fog-shrouded world.

"Are you a good person?" she asked abruptly, apropos of nothing.

"What?" He stopped walking (he had no idea where he was going, anyway) and turned to stare at her. She regarded him with eyes that had suddenly gone sharp and lucid, and he felt a stir of fear deep in his guts. He didn't like her this way; when she was confused, dreamy, she was a little annoying but otherwise harmless, but like this, awake and aware, hostility radiated off her, and he got the sense that if he made a sudden movement towards her, she would attack him like a wild animal.

She kept staring at him, her eyes narrow and feral, and he realized that they weren't going anywhere until she had an answer. "I try to be…" he answered slowly.

"Do you have any kids?" she demanded.

"Yes, a daughter."

She sprang forward so quickly that he didn't have time to react. In one swift movement she was holding the front of his jacket in a death-grip, pulling him towards her and onto the tips of his toes, and he felt something icy cold, metallic, press up against his neck.

"Did you ever hurt her?" she shrieked, her eyes rolling and insane, spittle pooling at the corners of her mouth. "Did you ever do anything to her, you sick bastard?"

Harry held very, very still, fighting gravity to keep his balance; he didn't think he would ever forget the feeling of a knife at his throat, no matter how old he got. He winced a little as she pressed the blade in closer, and felt something warm and wet running down the side of his neck in a thin trickle. "I never hurt my daughter," he said carefully, nonthreateningly. "I love her and would never, ever do anything to hurt her."

Angela glared at him for a moment more, and then stepped back, her hand letting go of his jacket and her knife-wielding arm going slack. "You promise?" she asked, the fury sliding out her voice, and for a moment, she looked so much like Heather that it made his head throb with pain. "Cross your heart and hope to die?" she added, her voice high-pitched and childish now.

Harry reached up and rubbed his forehead, ignoring the way her hand with the knife in it twitched at the movement. "Cross my heart," he promised with a sigh, suddenly exhausted beyond all belief. He wanted to go home more than he ever had in his life.

He frowned; for some strange reason, he couldn't picture where home was anymore. He wracked his brain, trying to focus, thinking so hard that he could feel the veins at his temples pound, but he just couldn't do it. He knew that he had a home, he could picture the house itself (was it a little blurry, a little indistinct at the edges, or was that just his imagination?), but he couldn't call up where it was or how to get back to it. It was like the old farmhouse existed somewhere in the middle of a vast, empty white plain, with no landmarks around it, nothing to help him find it now that it was lost.

Wait. Was it the house that was lost, or was he?

"The tree!" he said, and Angela looked at him curiously. "There's an oak tree in my front yard!" The house and all its beloved details came flooding back to him, filling his mind with their presence, with their reality, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He hated it, this forgetting, this tugging at the fabric of reality, and the sooner he got out of this godforsaken place the better.

"You're trying to go home," Angela informed him, the child-like voice gone and replaced by a flat, uninterested one.

He nodded. "Yes. I have to find someone here, and then I need to go home."

She shrugged and stared off into space. "If you remember the way."

"Why exactly are you following me anyway?" Harry demanded, suddenly frustrated and tired of her and her mood swings.

She glanced at him, her eyes wide with surprise. "Because they don't see you."

"Who doesn't?"

"The monsters," she explained, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

**2.**

The rock came out of nowhere.

I mean really, even here, in this awful place, who throws rocks at other people's heads? It wasn't big enough or thrown with enough strength to actually hurt, but it scared the hell out of me, and I nearly pissed my pants when it bounced harmlessly off my head.

"What the fuck?" I asked the emptiness, genuinely puzzled. The monsters I'd met so far had been more of the leap-out-and-try-to-tear-your-face-off variety, not the type of creatures that would waste their time throwing rocks, not to mention that most of them lacked the dexterity to even pick up small things, let alone throw them. "Is someone out there?"

I heard something shuffling around nearby, like some small thing was moving around behind a row of overflowing garbage cans. Holding one of J.D.'s wrenches out in front of me, I cautiously got closer to them. "Can you understand me?" I asked, not sure who (or what) I was talking to, but knowing it wasn't J.D. or Dad.

One of the garbage cans toppled over towards me, spewing trash out in an arc, and I leapt backwards to avoid being splattered. Behind the other cans, I saw a small, darting shape.

"Hey!" I yelled, starting to get pissed. "What the hell is your problem?" Whatever it was, it wasn't a monster; nothing here wasted time like this thing did, throwing rocks and pushing over trash cans like some amateur.

A small face poked out from behind the cans, and I was shocked to see a little girl glaring at me. At least, I think she was a little girl; she had wide blue eyes and blonde hair, and she looked like a typical kid, but no kid I've ever seen has had such a hateful expression, such rage and anguish in their eyes. I actually took a step away from her, not wanting to get scorched by those awful, burning eyes.

"I hate you!" the kid spat. "I know who you are, and I hate you!"

She took off running then, and, not really thinking it through, I chased after her. She was the only human-like thing I'd seen so far, and I wasn't going to let her get away until I'd had a chance to find out why she was here. And, I admitted to myself, knowing it was selfish, maybe she knew where Dad was, or maybe she'd seen J.D. and could point me in the right direction. I was really just wandering in circles at the moment.

I turned a corner to see her slipping into a narrow passageway between two buildings. "Oh, hell no!" I muttered, and squeezed in after her. It was a tight squeeze, especially with my pack, but I managed, and was pounding off after her as soon as I popped out on the other side.

Clearly, the fact that I got through the passageway surprised her, because she didn't start running again until I was nearly through. Her lapse in judgment was my advantage, and I managed to reach out and snag her wrist after only a few more paces.

Silently thanking whatever god watches over places like this that I had run track, I stopped short, nearly pulling the kid off her feet when she kept going and came to the end of my arm's length. Instead of acting scared, like a normal kid would after being chased and caught by a stranger, she turned around and started flailing at me with her free hand, trying her best to hit me anywhere she could reach.

"What is your problem?" I demanded, getting ahold of her other wrist and forcing her arms still.

She glared up into my face, her chest heaving for oxygen after our run. "I hate you!" she snarled, and struggled to break free.

"Yeah, I know, you told me!" For a little kid, she was strong, and putting up a pretty good fight. "How do you know me?"

"I hate you!"

"Why?"

I wasn't really expecting an answer, and when she did respond, I nearly dropped her hands in surprise. I'm sure she would have run away again if that had happened, and maybe it was only shock at her answer that made me hold on.

"Because your daddy comes to get you!"

"…what?" Maybe it was my softer tone, maybe it was my surprise. I don't know, but she calmed down a little and stopped fighting me. She was still shooting daggers at me with her eyes, but at least she wasn't trying to hit me anymore.

"Your daddy tries to find you," she spat, her eyes desolate holes in her face. "He looks for you and brings you home." She started struggling again, but it was half-hearted this time. "No one came to look for me, and you have two daddies looking for you, and it's not fair!"

"Two daddies? Wait a minute… have you seen them? Do you know where they are?" She had information, information I desperately wanted, and at that moment, I was willing to do anything to know what she knew. Somehow though, I knew that being aggressive wasn't going to get me anywhere.

One small foot lashed out and connected with my shin. Kid might be small, but she could kick like a damn horse. I pranced backwards a few steps, holding her away at arm's length. She actually lurched forward, trying to get close enough for another kick.

"Stop kicking me, please!" I begged. "What do you mean, two daddies? Do you know where they are?"

I think the brat recognized the longing in my voice; either that or she was wearing herself out, but in any case she stopped thrashing and stood still again. She was breathing really hard, much harder than she should have been, and for the first time I wondered if she was sick. She had a ghastly, white pallor to her skin, and she was scrawny, really way too thin.

"There's two daddies here right now," she told me, her voice still angry but beginning to calm down a little too. "Two daddies, and they're both looking for you."

"Have… have you seen them? Do you know where they are?"

She looked up at me with narrowed eyes, but I guess I must have looked this weird combination of hopeful, sad, and desperate, because her face softened, just a bit. "I saw the daddy with dark hair."

"Dad," I whispered, and even I could hear how lonely, how desperate, I sounded. I put my head down, unable to meet the little girl's eyes, and tried to not start crying. I wasn't successful.

Not thinking, I let go of the kid with one hand to wipe at my eyes. She didn't try to pull away; something about my tears had her captivated, and she waited patiently until I was under control again. I moved my hands up to her shoulders (her bony shoulders felt like daggers covered with a thin layer of skin and clothing) and looked her right in the eye.

"I'm looking for my dads," I told her. "I would really like it if you'd help me find them, but if you don't want to help me, I'd also really like it if you could tell me where you saw him." She nodded, now watching me with curiosity, which I greatly preferred to hostility. "If I let you go, will you run away again?"

She thought about that for a minute, then shook her head.

I took my hands off her shoulders. She trembled for a minute, like she was thinking about running again, but then changed her mind and decided to stay. "I… I saw the daddy with dark hair near the lake," she told me, her voice now almost shy. "He was walking there."

"Did you see the other one?" Not that J.D. was my first priority at this point, since he could take care of himself and I was also still mad at him, but it would be nice to know where he had been for future reference. I still owed him an ass-kicking.

"No," she told me, "but I know he's here. The air feels different, that's how I know."

"Okay." I thought for a few moments. "Do you want to come with me?" The kid was a giant brat, but I couldn't just leave her by herself in the fog.

She looked at me, her eyes wide with surprise. "You… you want me to come along?" she asked, like she had never considered such a thing in all her life.

"Yeah, sure. I mean," and I gestured widely out at the fog, "I can't just let the monsters get you, can I?"

Her brow creased in a frown, like she didn't understand what I'd just said. "Okay, I'll come," she decided, and slipped one of her small hands into one of mine. I started with surprise, not expecting that at all, but she looked up at me and actually gave me a little half-smile before she started tugging on my hand. "The lake is this way," she informed me, and I let myself be led away.

Her hand was like holding a glove filled with ice cubes.


	11. Chapter 11

**1.**

"Why are you back here?"

Her voice trailed through the fog to his ears, cutting through the dense atmosphere like a blade. James hunched his shoulders against it and started walking faster, nearly running, anything to get away from that harping, accusing voice. His pack swung from one hand; he had the half-formed thought that if he had to, he could swipe at her with it to make her go away.

"You're a coward, you know that? You run away from your problems instead of facing them like a man."

That one hurt, but he wasn't about to let her know that she had gotten to him. He kept walking, hoping she would get left behind or would give up following him, but when she spoke again, she sounded closer, like she'd somehow managed to creep up directly behind him.

"You're not here looking for someone you love again, are you? Who would ever be stupid enough to love someone like you?"

He stopped so abruptly that she collided with his back. Instead of moving away from him, Maria wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed herself up against him, writhing her body against his and letting her hands roam across his front. "I always knew you'd come back for me, James," she panted in his ear, wrapping one of her legs over his hip, sounding and acting exactly like a woman in heat. "I always knew that you really loved me."

James shuddered in disgust; her hands felt like spiders crawling up his chest. He shook her off and turned around, his hands held up in a warding off gesture. "What do you want?" he asked.

Maria turned her lower lip out, pouting like a small child, and crossed her arms across her chest again. "I want you to love me," she told him, like it was the easiest thing in the world and he was just being unreasonable by not indulging her.

"I can't. I won't." Why was that so hard for her to understand?

"Why not?" she demanded, her eyes narrowed and her voice rising again. "You loved Mary, you can love me."

"I can't." He was getting desperate now; the more time he wasted dealing with her, the less time he had to look for Harry.

She glared at him, and in her anger, she bore more resemblance to Mary than she ever had before, although he didn't think she was aware of it. She looked like Mary had near the end, when the pain was too much, when the cancer had transformed her into a monster. "Who is she?" she hissed. "Who is she that you love so much that you can't love me anymore?"

"I'm done with this," James said, suddenly, hopelessly tired of this same circular argument, and turned his back on her. He started to move away, to leave her and her questions and accusations behind, but her hand shot out and latched onto one of the pockets of his jacket.

"Why are you wearing that jacket, James?" she snarled. "If it's really been ten years, why would you wear that exact same jacket?"

He jerked to a halt, held in place by her clawed hand. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

"That jacket," she whispered, leaning up against his back to speak directly into his ear. There was nothing sexy about her motions now—now every movement she made was full of menace and implied violence, and for the first time, James was afraid of her. "Do you remember when you got it?"

"Yes," he answered, frozen in place by a sudden rush of pure, unadulterated terror. Something about the way she was speaking, the way she held on to him… it reminded him of things best left forgotten. He shivered as she ran her tongue up the side of his face; it felt like getting touched with a cold, dead fish.

"Tell me about the day you got that jacket," she commanded, her other hand dancing up his arm before digging into his bicep with sharp, icy fingers.

He shivered again, hating the feel of her touching him, hating having her this close to him, but helpless to disobey. "It… it was the day I left the Army…"

**2.**

The young woman sat on a bench outside the barrack's office, swinging her legs and humming quietly to herself. Young men and women, both enlisted and officers, trotted back and forth in front of her on the sidewalk, and the woman found herself deliberately ignoring the appraising looks from some of the younger men. She kept her eyes trained on the office's doors, and when a young man with shorn blond hair and a scar on his forehead exited the building, her face broke into a wide smile and she got up and rushed towards him.

"Mary!" the man said, surprised but obviously happy to see her. "What are you doing here?"

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, right there in front of the officers and everybody. She heard a whistle from the sidewalk, followed by a smattering of laughter, but she didn't care. "How did it go?" she asked inquisitively, looking up into the man's green eyes.

James smiled down at her, his arms around her waist. "Honorable discharge. I'm not their property anymore."

She squealed and kissed him again. "That's great news, baby!" she exclaimed. "You're a free man now!"

"Yeah," he said, grinning foolishly. "I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of my life."

"You can start by growing your hair out, covering this," she told him, and brushed her fingers lightly across the scar on his forehead. He recoiled a little at her touch and she frowned up at him for a second before smiling again. "Someday you're going to tell me how you got that scar."

"Maybe someday," he promised.

They walked down the steps arm-in-arm, and sat down on the bench she'd just vacated. "I have something for you," she told him, and reached under the bench for a shopping bag she'd stashed there. She pulled out a carefully wrapped gift and presented it to him with a flourish.

"You just left that bag here when you came to get me?" James asked, taking the box from her.

She shrugged. "It's Fayetteville, not New York City."

"You don't know some of these guys," he informed her seriously, plucking at the ribbon on top of the box with nervous fingers. "The barracks are full of thieves and assholes."

"In that order?" she asked mischievously.

He laughed in spite of himself. "No, I got the order wrong. More assholes than thieves."

"Open your present," she commanded, and he obediently, clumsily ripped off the wrapping paper and opened the box beneath it.

"It's a jacket," she bubbled as he lifted the dark green garment from the box, speechless. "I know it looks kind of, you know, military, but sometimes guys have a hard time adjusting to civvie life, and I thought if you still looked a little bit like an Army guy, it might be easier…" her voice trailed off as she realized he was staring at her. "You like it, right?" she asked, doubt creeping into her voice.

He pulled her up against him, crushing the crisp jacket between them, and kissed her. "It's great," he said when she pulled away, panting and flushed. "I'll wear it all the time."

"Good," she said, satisfied, and put her head on his shoulder.

They sat together on the bench for a few minutes, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, watching the world move on around them. James kept the jacket on his lap, fingering the patches on its shoulders and breast pocket.

"Come with me," he said abruptly, and Mary lifted her head off his shoulder to look up at him.

"What?"

"Come with me," he repeated, suddenly full of determination. "Come with me away from here. Let's go somewhere new, somewhere far away, and start a new life together."

She smiled, and he realized that she thought he was kidding. "How far away are we going to go?" she asked, playing along.

"As far away as it takes. Somewhere up north, where it gets cold in the winter." He hugged her against him. "Come with me."

"Are you serious, James?" she asked, her eyes round and sparkling. "Do you really want me to come with you?"

"More than I've ever wanted anything else."

"That sounds a little like a marriage proposal," she teased.

"Maybe it is."

"What?" She sat back then, pulling away from him, one hand still on his chest. She examined his face closely, searching for a trick, waiting for him to smile and say he was joking. He met her gaze, suddenly more serious than he'd been in a long time.

"Come with me," he repeated, his voice solemn, his eyes filled with an unfathomable longing.

**3.**

"And?" Maria hissed in his ear, her voice sounding like dry, dead autumn leaves getting blown across a deserted parking lot. Her hand still dug into his upper arm, gripping him with a surprising, hideous strength, like she was trying to make her fingers meet through his flesh. She had let go of his pocket with her other hand, and had it resting on his hip, where it made his skin burn with cold even through his jeans.

"And she said yes," he told her miserably. "We… we got married at the courthouse three days later, then got in my car and didn't stop driving until we were in Silent Hill."

"And then what happened?"

"You know what happened," he retorted, feeling a little spark of anger deep in his chest. "You think you're her, you know exactly what happened."

"Tell me." She suddenly latched on to his hip, and he gasped as her fingers ripped through tough denim like blades and rested on his bare skin. The chill from them permeated his entire body, making him feel light-headed and helpless.

"Six months later she got sick," he spat out. "Three years after that she was dead."

"She was dead because you killed her," Maria breathed, and maybe he was imagining it, but she almost sounded like she was getting excited again, like the thought of violence and death flicked a switch inside her and let things bubble to the surface. "She was dead because of you, because you held a pillow over her face until her breath… just… stopped." Her hand snaked around to his belt buckle and hovered there, lightly brushing the skin of his stomach like dry, frost-covered twigs. She eased her grip on his arm and let that hand travel towards his face; he cringed away from her touch as she brushed his hair back behind his ear and then massaged the back of his neck with stony, freezing fingers.

"And then you came back here to find her, didn't you?" she purred, and he wasn't imagining it, she really was excited by all this. "You came all the way here to find the woman… you… murdered." Her hand clamped down on the back of his neck, making the tendons creak and the bones grind against each other. The tips of her fingers tore into the sides of his neck, and he felt some welcome, blessed heat as thin rivulets of blood started trickling down his skin.

"And when you couldn't find her, you decided to die yourself, didn't you? Drove your car into the lake, let it sink to the bottom." Her hand suddenly clenched on his stomach, and he felt the skin break underneath it. It felt like she was trying to claw her way straight through to his spine. "And you should have been back here after that, but you weren't, were you? You… got… away."

You got away. The same thing the monster, the pyramid thing in his dreams, had told him. "No," he moaned, forcing the word past his frozen vocal cords.

"Yes," she whispered, and he winced as her fingers dug deeper into his gut, horrified that they were slowly working their way south. "You got away. How did you do it, James? How did you escape?"

"I didn't… never got away…"

"You did!" she snapped, and he cried out at the sudden, bright flash of pain as she slashed deeper into his neck. Her hand instantly relaxed, and she started stroking the sides of his neck in a facsimile of compassion. "It's okay, it's okay," she soothed, her other hand creeping underneath his belt buckle, its passage eased by his blood smeared across it. "It's okay, you're here now, you can stay with me, love me… you're back where you belong."

He closed his eyes then, feeling helpless, knowing it was futile to try and fight the monsters here, knowing that they would always have the upper hand. For just a moment, he leaned back into her, and she made a noise that was probably supposed to be a purr but sounded more like something dying. She ran her frigid, dead tongue across his cheek and moved the hand on his neck to his chest, directly over his pounding heart, and caressed there in anticipation. His own hands, clenched into fists this whole time, went slack, and his pack fell to the ground.

Without warning, jarred by the sudden drop, the radio in his pack flared to life, and static blared out at them. Cutting through the static, his voice strident and loud, James heard Harry say "James!" before the radio cut off as abruptly as it had turned on.

James's eyes flew open, and it all came rushing back to him. Harry, Heather, their house, their lives together, the only real family he'd ever known… in the blaze of color that ran through his mind in half a heartbeat, he knew.

"No!" he shouted, and his muscles broke free of their strange paralysis with an enormous surge of adrenaline. He yanked himself away from her, leaving shreds of his jeans and jacket behind, and stumbled forward. Nearly falling over his pack, he awkwardly turned to face her, fully expecting to see her transformed into a monster, something with slathering teeth and dripping fangs, ready to tear him to pieces.

But it was only Maria standing before him, her eyes empty and hopelessly sad. He fumbled for the long wrench that was sticking out of his pack and brandished it at her, but she stayed where she was, making no move towards him.

"No," he told her, not shouting any longer but still breathing heavily as adrenaline coursed through his veins. "No, I don't belong here. I have a home now, a life outside of this place. I don't belong _here_, and I don't belong to _you_."

She looked up at him, watching him from under her long bangs, and a single tear slipped from her eye. Perhaps it was the uncertain light, perhaps it was her heavy mascara, but the tear looked black, like a tiny piece of space torn from the sky, as it slid down her cheek.

Turning her back on him, she started to walk away into the fog. As the grey shadows swirled around her, pulling her into their grasp, she looked back over her shoulder and spoke to him one last time.


	12. Chapter 12

**1.**

Harry sat on a bench, staring blindly out at the lake. A few feet away, Angela stood at the water's edge, trying to skip stones across the water's smooth surface. She wasn't very good at it; the stones would jump once, maybe twice, and then sink beneath the glassy waves. Undeterred, she would find another stone and try again, like she had all the time and all the patience in the world.

For some reason, the ripples the stones made when they broke the lake's skin and started to sink mesmerized Harry. He watched the ripples spread outward, grow larger, overlap the ripples created by stones both previous and future, and he got the strangest idea that if he watched them long enough, the confusion in his head would split open and he'd understand everything that was going on around him.

He watched the water, and it felt like his concentration, instead of deepening, was moving outwards, expanding, trying to take in the world and everything in it. He could feel his pupils dilating, could feel his hands and feet growing cold, could feel the fog plucking at him again with its quiet, insistent fingers. The fog… it wanted him, it wanted him to let go, to drift away into its embrace.

With an effort that was very nearly painful, he tore his eyes away from the lake, and the strange, drifting sensation faded away. He gasped with lungs that felt new and raw, like they had been put together by someone with only a memory of how lungs worked, and covered his face with his hands. He had to _focus_, he had to resist the drift, he had to remember! Already he could sense himself losing things; memories were falling away from him, cascading silently out of his mind in a spill of sound and images, and try as he might, he couldn't hold on to all of them. He could barely hold on to the important ones, and the longer he was here, the more difficult it became. It was the worst close to the lake; something in the water called to him, wanted to take him down into its depths, where he would just… disappear. Just be gone.

"Why are you here?" he asked Angela, pointedly looking away from the waves and ripples. "What brought you to this place?"

He watched her toss another stone, and tried to close his ears to the sound of it skidding and plopping into the water. "I killed my father," she said simply.

"What?" He hadn't really expected an answer, and he certainly hadn't expected that one.

She shrugged, her face complacent. "He deserved it. He hurt me for a long time." She glanced at him, and for just a moment, the rage built up behind her eyes again. "If you were here for hurting your daughter, I'd kill you too," she promised him, and Harry felt a chill run through him; she looked powerful, vengeful, like a harpy sent to set right an ancient wrong. Then her brow smoothed, and she was sad, spacey Angela again. "I thought, once he was gone, the hurting would stop." She lifted a stone and studied it closely. "It didn't," she finished quietly, and pitched the stone into the water, really hurled it, not trying to make it skip at all.

Harry waited a few moments, but she was done, and stood watching the waves, her arms crossed over her chest in a warding-off gesture as old as time itself. "I'm sorry," he offered.

She didn't look at him, but a grim half-smile flitted across her face. "Why? You weren't there. It's not your fault."

Harry frowned; he had had this conversation before, but with who? He wracked his brain, knowing that it was somehow important that he remember, but he came up completely blank. It was like someone had gone through his mind with a paintbrush, blotting out vast swathes of memory, destroying his mental landscape and leaving him wandering.

He got off the bench and brushed off his pant legs. "I need to get away from the water," he told Angela. "Do you want to come with me?"

She didn't answer, lost in her own thoughts.

The fog had nearly closed behind him, hiding the lake from view, when she called out to him. "Who are you looking for?"

He stopped and was about to answer her, the name on the tip of his tongue, when the word died in his mouth. Harry frowned; why couldn't he remember his name? He could picture him, could call up an image of his face as easily as he could call up his own, but the name danced on the edge of his consciousness, elusive, darting away whenever he got close.

"I… I can't remember his name," he admitted, feeling ashamed, knowing he should know, wanting to know.

Angela glided up from the lake's edge and stood in front of him. "Can you describe him?" she asked, her voice surprisingly gentle.

"He's tall," Harry told her, appreciatively, "taller than me, and bigger too, heavier. He has blonde hair, wears it a little bit long, and green eyes." Angela's eyes narrowed just a little, but she didn't speak, merely nodded at him to go on.

Harry pausing, thinking; that was what he looked like, but it wasn't him, it didn't describe who he really was, this man that he needed to find. "He doesn't smile very often, but when he does… it changes his whole face, makes him look like a new person. He… he doesn't think he's very good at expressing himself, at showing that he cares, and most of the time he's not, but… sometimes, when it slips out, he has this tenderness, this kindness, deep inside him, and maybe if his life had been different he'd be able to show it more often, but… but he can't… and I can't remember his name!"

Harry bent over his knees, exhausted and depressed at the effort of trying to remember. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the drift, fighting the urge to let the fog pull him apart, pull him into sweet, quiet oblivion.

He felt a soft, cool hand on his shoulder, and realized that Angela had taken a few steps forward until she was right next to him. "You're looking for James," she said quietly.

"James!" Harry shot back up, nearly colliding with her in his eagerness, as it all came rushing back to him, all their history together, all the years of their lives. "I'm looking for James!" he announced triumphantly, grinning at Angela like a fool. The grin slowly slid off his face as he noticed the tears sparkling on her cheeks. "How… how do you know that?" he asked.

The half-smile came back, and this time it stayed. "We've met," she told him, her voice plain and austere. "I… I think I know what you're talking about, with his kindness. Almost like he doesn't realize it's happening, but like he can't stop himself either, you know?"

"Yes," Harry said gratefully, hoping she could be this lucid for just a little longer. Volatile and mercurial as she was, she was still a companion in this awful place, another human voice in the darkness. "Have you seen him?"

She shook her head. "Not for a long time." Looking back over her shoulder at the lake, she considered. "Not for years."

"Oh. Do you know where he might go?"

"Try the hospital." She turned her back on him then, and started walking back towards the lake.

"Hey, where are you going?" Harry reached out and tried to catch her sleeve, but she was already beyond his reach.

She stopped, and Harry felt something brush past him, a loneliness and old sadness that was not his own, and he shivered in its passage. "I can't go with you any further," she told him, still looking out at the water. "I think… I think I'm going for a walk out there."

"Oh." He was disappointed to see her go, but he wasn't going to try and persuade her and risk triggering one of her blind rages again. "I guess this is goodbye, then."

"Good luck to you, Harry Mason," she said, her voice clear and strong.

"Good luck to… wait. How do you know my name?" He was certain that he hadn't told her; with the drifting, the constant tugging at his memories and self, he had guarded his name, valued it as something of power, something to pull him back into himself.

She turned her head towards him, and she was still wearing that little half-smile. "Everyone here knows you." Walking towards the water again, leaving him flabbergasted behind her, she called over her shoulder, "Everyone here knows you, Harry Mason, and that includes the Butcher. He can see you when the others can't."

He started to call out to her, to go after her, but the fog closed around her body, and she was gone.


	13. Chapter 13

**1.**

The little girl kept up a constant stream of chatter as she skipped beside me, asking questions about me, my house, my school, my life… whatever came into her mind, she vocalized, often not even waiting for me to respond before starting up again with another question, another observation. I guess I'd always known that little kids liked to talk, but this was just getting exhausting. On the other hand, I hadn't seen a monster in a long time, which should have been encouraging but wasn't. I couldn't help but think that since I wasn't seeing the smaller monsters, there was something really big up around the next corner, waiting to attack. I'd played enough video games to know that if there weren't any grass monsters to turf, it was because a big, badass, boss monster was lurking somewhere nearby.

The kid must have noticed that I was distracted, either that or I wasn't answering her questions fast enough, because she suddenly stopped skipping and started tugging on my hand. I looked down at her, uncomfortably aware of how the cold from her hand had spread up my arm, almost to my shoulder.

"Why are you looking around all the time?" she demanded, looking a little put-out. "We would be there now if you didn't keep slowing down."

Told off by someone from the elementary school set. This place just got weirder all the time. "I'm keeping an eye out for monsters," I told her.

She sighed and rolled her eyes at me. "All the grown-ups here are always talking about monsters," she groused. "I've never seen one, and I've been here a long time."

She'd never seen one? Now that was interesting. "What do you see?" I asked cautiously, not at all sure I wanted to know the answer.

Looking at me like I was the stupidest person alive, she said, "Fog. Buildings. Sometimes the lake. Sometimes people too, but mostly just me." She shook her head decisively. "No monsters."

"What do the people look like?" If she described Claudia, I was going to run away from her screaming, I just knew it.

She paused, considering. "There's the sad one… she looks a little bit like you, but her hair is a different color. There's Eddie; I don't like him," she shuddered dramatically, "he's crazy! Always talking about dogs and guns and stuff. There's the lady with yellow hair." She stopped talking then, and for a moment, looked almost wistful. "She looks like who I'm looking for, but she's not. She's not who I'm looking for at all."

I studied her face; I might not know kids very well, but she looked like she was struggling not to cry. "Hey, hey, it's okay," I coaxed, and got down on my knees so that my face was level with hers. "Who are you looking for?" I asked gently. "Maybe we can look together."

She met my eyes then, searching for a lie or some other small cruelty, and, apparently seeing none, burst into loud, raucous tears. Throwing her arms around my neck, she buried her face in my shoulder and wept.

I awkwardly held her, patting her back helplessly and letting her cry. Her body was freezing, and the way she was holding on to me was making me shiver, but her tears were hot when they fell on my shoulder.

"I'm… I'm… I'm l-l-looking for Muh-Mary!" she stammered out, once the first deluge of tears had passed. She wasn't done crying, not by a long shot (I recognized a much-needed crying session when I saw one), but at least the first raw anguish was over. She picked her head up off me, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and then nestled back down on me.

"Who's Mary?" I asked. That name… it was vaguely familiar, like I should know it, like I'd heard it mentioned before in reference to this place, but nothing was coming forward.

"Mary is my friend," she whimpered. "I met her in the hospital."

"The hospital here?" If she was slick enough to make friends in the hospital in this place, she must have some mad skills, and I should definitely keep her around.

She leaned back and looked at me like I was crazy. "No, not here!" she snapped, her voice full of scorn. "The special hospital, the one with the different name. Hos-Spice hospital."

"Hospice?" I suddenly had a creepy inkling about why she was always cold. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I pulled back from her a little when my mind made the connection. Maybe that was why she couldn't see the monsters, or why they left her alone.

She snapped her fingers at me. "Yeah, that's the one! Hos-Spice hospital!" Her expression turned hopefully. "Do you know that hospital? Have you seen Mary?"

I shook my head. "I'm afraid I don't."

Her expression hardened again. She wiped her nose again, her crying jag apparently over and her despondency replaced with something else, something harder and more familiar to her. "_He_ didn't know where she was, either," she complained bitterly. "He should have, but he didn't."

"Who's he?" I asked, and somewhere, far in the corners of my mind, I had an idea who she was talking about already.

Now she looked really pissed. "_James_," she spat, her voice filled with the venom of someone much, much older. "He was her husband, but he didn't know where to look to find her, and now she's still lost, and he's gone! Like… like he just forgot about her!"

I got to my feet, taken aback by her hatred and hostility. "What… what does James look like?" I asked, even though I already knew what her answer was going to be.

She didn't disappoint me. "He's tall, and old, and he has yellow hair like mine. He never smiles, he doesn't talk very much, and he killed Mary!"

**2.**

I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to get to my feet, since my knees went weak on me and I collapsed back onto them. They sent an angry shockwave running up my spine, protesting at their poor treatment, but I ignored it, choosing instead to gape at the little girl. "He… he killed her?" I asked stupidly.

She nodded vehemently. "He killed her, he told me he did. He took her away from me, and I came here to find her, and I can't, and it's all his fault that she's gone!" She glared at me, her eyes bright and shining with hate. "I'll never forgive him for taking her away from me, never! She was like my mommy and now she's gone!"

I rocked back on my heels, feeling weak and helpless after her vicious diatribe. Was everything she was saying true? Could J.D. really have killed his wife? "I don't believe it," I whispered.

The little girl leaned in close to me, examining my face with deep interest. "Why not?" she demanded. "I haven't lied to you, you should believe me."

I hung my head, unable to meet her eyes. "Because J.D. wouldn't do something like that," I muttered.

I didn't think I'd spoken loud enough for her to hear me, but she sprang back like I'd tried to slap her and nearly fell in her haste to get away from me. "You know him?" she asked, incredulous. "You know James and you don't hate him too?"

I shook my head. "I… I don't hate him. He's… he's my James-Dad."

"_He's_ one of the daddies?" Her pale face was nearly incandescent with rage and disbelief. "I don't believe you! You're lying, you're lying, he _can't_ be one of the daddies!" She was suddenly on me again, flailing with small fists and feet. I brought my arms up to block the maelstrom of blows, but the kid was pretty good, and a few snuck past my defenses and pummeled me around the head.

She tired quickly, and stood over me, winded and heaving for air. She had no stamina at all. "Is he one of the daddies?" she demanded.

Mutely, I nodded. "He's… he's been one of my dads since I was seven years old," I whispered.

"For… for that long?" she panted. "But… but you're_ old_ now!"

I looked up, and saw that her face had crumpled into a mask of indescribable hurt and grief. Fresh tears leaked out of her eyes and, not thinking, I reached out to hug her again, to try and take some of that pain away.

She backpedalled, slapping my hands away. "You're lying!" she hissed. "You're lying, you're lying, he can't be a daddy! He doesn't really love you! He doesn't love _anybody_!"

Intellectually, I knew that she was lashing out, trying to hurt me to relieve the anguish in herself. My head knew that, but try convincing your heart of something it doesn't want to believe. "J.D. loves me," I said, my voice small and childish. I was absurdly close to tears myself. "I'm not sure of a lot of things, but I'm sure of that."

"Prove it," she ordered, her voice high and cruel. "Tell me how you know."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She glowered over me imperiously for a few minutes, watching as my mouth opened and closed like a fish and I tried to find an example of one time that I knew, with no doubt, that J.D. loved me. It felt like my head was full of cotton.

"See?" she taunted. "You can't do it, because he doesn't love you or anyone!"

I shook my head. "No, that's not true, it's… wait!" A memory suddenly rose to the surface of the swirling chaos in my head, bright and clear and distinct.


	14. Chapter 14

**1.**

I sat down at the dinner table that night in a bad mood, itching for a fight. Things weren't going my way at school, my friends were all acting like a pack of jackasses, and there was nothing anyone could tell me that would make me think there was an end in sight to the troubles of being thirteen. To top it all off, I had been to the orthodontist the day before and my mouth still hurt like someone had put a tiny vise on each one of my teeth and was slowly tightening the clamps.

Dad had made soft foods for dinner, in deference to my hurting mouth, and somehow even that pissed me off. I wanted crunchy things, foods that you really had to gnaw on and chew, things got stuck on my braces and caught up between the wires, not mashed potatoes and soup. I glowered down at my plate, actively and hatefully ignoring both Dad and J.D., letting myself marinate in my mood, working myself up into a real snit.

Dad kept trying to draw me into the conversation, asking me questions and my opinions, trying not to look hurt at my monosyllabic answers. J.D., at least, had the sense to not try and talk to me, which made me even angrier, since it's easier to be nasty to him than it is to Dad; J.D. gets mad right back instead of quiet and hurt like Dad, and when I want to pick a fight, he's the one to antagonize.

I was already worked up, hating myself and the world, fighting back furious tears, when Dad made the one mistake that was sure to push me completely over the edge.

"Cheryl, would you pass the potatoes, please?"

"My name is HEATHER!" I shrieked, the innocent name-slip inspiring a lot more angst than it really warranted, but I was already so close to a total meltdown that it was the perfect catalyst. "Why can't you even get my name right?" I could hear how my words were slurred around my mouthful of metal, and that was it, I was done. Bursting into ferocious, explosive tears, I violently pushed myself away from the table and, ignoring the shocked looks on Dad's and J.D.'s face, fled for my bedroom upstairs.

I slammed the door with a spectacular bang and threw myself on my bed, crying hysterically. I hated everyone and everything, but mostly myself.

After a few minutes of wretched sobbing, as I was starting to get myself under control but before I could start feeling ashamed of my behavior, someone knocked on my door. The purposeful, bold sound of the knocking should have clued me in, but I was too absorbed in my own misery to make the connection.

"Go AWAY!" I screamed, the impressive sound of my angst somewhat dampened by my pillow.

I heard a low, humorless chuckle from the other side of the door. "Little Bit, I'm coming in there in about thirty seconds, whether you want me to or not. If you have anything you want to hide, you've got twenty-five seconds to do it."

J.D., not Dad. Shit! I glanced around the room, frantically trying to remember if there was anything out that could get me in trouble. No, the horror novels were safely under the bed, along with the romance manga and my secret sketchbook. When I thought I had a few seconds left, I buried my face back in my pillow and turned around so my back was facing the rest of the room.

The door creaked, and J.D. let himself in. Why hadn't I thought to lock the door? Stupid, stupid, stupid! I could sense him, just standing there and looking at me, and then he sighed, which was the worst thing he could have done. J.D. has this deep, soul-moving sigh, and he knows it and works it when he has to, which was probably exactly what he was doing now. Dammit, how can I stay mad at him when he sounds this sad? I can damn well try, that's for sure.

I could hear a squeak as he moved my chair away from my desk, then the sound of him sitting down. I knew he was facing the bed, looking at me, probably leaning on his joined hands, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of turning around. He wouldn't want to see me anyway, not when I was this hideous, this awful of a person.

"Do you know what my dad used to do to me when I didn't behave how he wanted?" J.D. asked, and he didn't sound mad at all, more like he had this old sadness buried deep inside him.

Either way, that got my attention. J.D. never talks about his life before he met me and Dad, never, not once, and him suddenly bringing up his own dad was like seeing a unicorn under the oak tree in the front yard. In spite of myself, even though I still wanted to be angry, curiosity won out, and I looked at him from over my shoulder.

"No. Did he talk to you about it, tell you about expectations and stuff?" That's what Dad always did with me.

J.D. laughed, only it wasn't really a laugh, more like a harsh bark. "No, he never talked. He'd beat the shit out of me, is what he'd do."

I gaped at him, anger and misery forgotten, completely swallowed by interest. "Really?"

"Really." He pulled down the collar on his shirt, exposed the left side of his collarbone. "Here. Feel this." He pointed at a spot on the bone. "Right here."

I sat up, not too proud in the least to bother hiding my fascination with all this new information, and felt along the ridge on his skin. At the spot where he'd pointed, I felt a sudden, jagged lump on what had been smooth bone, and J.D. winced under my touch.

I pulled my hand away. "Did I hurt you?"

"Not really." He let go of his shirt, and it sprang back up to cover the area. "I'm not used to being touched there."

"Did… did your dad do that?"

He nodded. "When I was nine years old."

"Jesus…" I breathed, slipping up and using language that I knew Dad wouldn't like. J.D., however, just looked at me solemnly and then reached up and pushed his hair off his forehead.

I gasped, realizing I had never actually seen J.D. without his hair hanging in his eyes and suddenly understanding why. On the right side of his forehead, starting a half-inch or so to the side and then running up into his hairline, J.D. had a lumpy, misshapen scar that twisted a meandering path across his skin. The whole thing was about two inches long and it looked like a chunk of his flesh had been ripped off his head, leaving scar tissue to fill the void.

I stared at it, knowing I was being rude but unable to help it, until J.D. flushed a little under my scrutiny and moved his hand. His hair flopped back into place, concealing the jagged line, and he took a moment to smooth it down, making sure the scar was completely covered. He met my eye and said, "That's what happens when someone hits you with the buckle end of the belt instead of the strap."

"What… what did you do?" I asked.

"Stood up, turned around, and broke his jaw," he told me, misunderstanding the question. "That," he gestured towards his forehead, "was the last time he ever hit me. I left home six months later and haven't spoken to him since."

"Didn't anyone try to protect you? Child Services or something?" Some of the kids at school were in the CPS system. They were a sad, empty-eyed group who stuck together and rarely spoke to anyone outside of their circle.

He shook his head. "Different times, Little Bit. I had a roof over my head and I got fed most days, so everyone thought I had enough. Besides, he was usually careful to not leave marks where anyone could see them."

J.D. lapsed into silence, caught in his own memories, as I tried to process everything he had told me. My hands, moving of their own accord, found a stuffed animal on the bed and I hugged it to my chest, which ached with a hurt that wasn't my own.

"What happened after you left?" I asked finally, needing to break the thick, oppressive silence.

He looked up at me, a little startled, like he had forgotten I was there. "Joined the army, learned how to be a mechanic. Floated around for a few years." He stared off into space again, and when he spoke, his voice was hesitant, almost shy. "Got married."

"You had a wife?" I asked, surprised. This was a revelation. "What was her name?"

"Mary."

"What happened to her? Where is she now?"

J.D. trembled, his eyes wide and glassy, and I realized I'd crossed a line I wasn't meant to cross. "Ah, shit, I'm sorry, J.D., I didn't mean to…"

"She died," he interrupted, his voice low and hoarse. "Three years before I met your dad."

I shut my mouth then, vowing not to talk anymore until he did. I felt a little bit like I was in a minefield, picking my way around J.D.'s memories, trying to avoid the ones that were sharp, the ones that hurt us both.

"The reason I'm telling you all this," he said, finally, after taking a long time to compose himself, "is because you have a dad downstairs who loves you like nothing I've ever seen before. He makes mistakes sometimes, sure, but… but, Heather, I've never seen love like he has for you. You're his world."

"You are too," I told him, and I could hear tears rising in my voice again. Could feel them too, welling up in the back of my throat.

He smiled at me then and, unexpectedly, reached out and touched my cheek with the back of his fingers. This tenderness, this kindness, so unlike the typical J.D., was too much for me. The tears overflowed their borders and started spilling down my cheeks.

"I don't mean half to him what you do," J.D. said gently, with a trace of regret. "If I'd had a father like him, maybe things… a lot of things… would have been different in my life."

I started crying in earnest then, and flung my arms around his neck. Holding onto him like I was drowning and he was my life preserver, I babbled, "I'm sorry, J.D., I'm sorry, I'm such a bitch, I don't mean what I say…"

J.D. patted me on the back. "Thanks, Little Bit, but I'm not the one you should be talking to."

He was right too, dammit. I let him go and ran down the stairs.

Dad was still sitting at the kitchen table, listlessly picking at his mashed potatoes. The light had changed while I was upstairs and he was mostly in the dark now, as the daylight had gone away and he hadn't gotten up to turn on the overhead light. There were shadows and planes across his face that I'd never seen before, and I realized for the first time that he was getting older, that both he and J.D. would get old before me and even die, and for just a second, it felt like my heart was splitting in two.

I threw myself at him, nearly knocking him over with a full-body tackle, and wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could. My face buried in his chest, I sobbed, "I'm so sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry, I didn't want to make you so sad, I love you, I'm sorry…"

"Sssshhh, it's okay, it's okay," he soothed, holding me close to him and stroking my hair. "I love you too, Heather, don't cry…"

But I couldn't stop crying, and he kept talking to me quietly, telling me that it was okay, that he remembered being thirteen, that it wouldn't last forever, all the things a dad is supposed to tell his kid when she's upset and weeping in his arms. Eventually, I started to quiet down, but I was still a sniffly, damp wreck, my face still on Dad's now-soaked chest, when J.D. came back into the kitchen. Maybe he'd been there for a while, but I didn't realize it until he spoke.

"Well," he said, his voice tinged with humor, "she's still crying, but at least she's not mad anymore."

Despite my emotional state, that shit wouldn't stand. I turned my head, peeked out at him from over Dad's arm, and said, "Asshole." It would've been more effective if my voice wasn't so distorted and raw from crying.

"Heather!" Dad admonished, but J.D. just smiled at me, unoffended. His eyes were a little red too, like maybe he'd been doing some crying himself, all alone upstairs, while I commanded Dad's attention. That thought, one of my first mature ones of the day, made me feel a little sad again, so I let go of Dad with one arm and gestured J.D. over. "Come here, asshole."

"Stop calling him…"

"No, Harry, it's fine." J.D. pulled one of the kitchen chairs over next to Dad's and sat down.

His arms were long enough to reach around both of us.

**2.**

"He loves both of us," I finished. "Me and my dad… J.D. loves both of us."

The little girl had quieted down, was sitting cross-legged on the ground across from me, listening intently. She didn't look mad anymore, only tired and depressed, her eyes empty, blank holes in her face.

She sighed once, mournfully, and then clambered to her feet. "It's not fair," she told me, her voice free from rancor, simply stating a fact. "It's not fair that he could love you and not me."

"I'm sorry," I whispered, my voice raw and faint from telling the story.

She shrugged, a gesture far too mature and world-weary for her narrow shoulders. "Maybe if I keep looking long enough, I'll find Mary," she said, staring off into the fog. "Maybe."

"I… I don't think Mary's here."

She glanced at me, and I could see her preparing herself for another screaming match, and I braced myself for it. Then the denial, masquerading as anger, melted from her face. "I don't think so either," she admitted. "But what else can I do?"

"Leave?" I suggested, amazed at my own boldness. "Try and leave this place, find somewhere else? Somewhere… somewhere that the sun shines?" I desperately missed the sun, and thought that I'd give up almost anything to see it again. Anything except my dads.

For the first time, she smiled at me. For a moment, it looked like she wouldn't manage it, that the muscles in her face had forgotten how, but then her mouth crinkled upwards at the corners. Just a little, but it was enough. "Maybe," she agreed. She looked out into the fog again, and started walking away, her stride filled with purpose and determination.

I had been dismissed, as clearly as if she'd slammed a door in my face. "Hey, wait!" I called, scrambling to my feet, wincing as pins and needles ran up them as they were jarred awake.

She paused, not turning around. "Try the hospital. The daddies probably went there," she said, then kept going, letting the fog shield her from my view.

"Wait!" I yelled, a little desperate now. I tried to run after her, but by the time my legs were fully awake and functional again, she was gone.


	15. Chapter 15

**1.**

Something was following him.

Whatever it was, it stayed at his back, keeping itself hidden in the fog, moving so stealthily that Harry was never completely sure if it was there or not. He'd think he was alone, just another wandering specter in the fog, and then he'd hear a dragging footstep, a scraping sound, or the crunch of a twig breaking underfoot. Whenever he turned, though, there wasn't anything behind him but swirling fog.

He could feel its eyes too, constantly boring into his back, searching him, stripping him down to his bare essence. The feeling didn't waver, never left him, no matter how often he looked over his shoulder or tried to dodge away from it. The thing, the tracker, was sly, crafty, much better than he was, and he wasn't going to be able to give it the slip. It had been following him ever since he had left the lake.

The lake. The drifting wasn't as strong now that he was away from the lake, but he could still feel it, insistent, pulling on him, tugging at his thoughts and memories, trying to dissolve him into the fog. With every step he took, he could feel himself forgetting, could feel large parts of his life falling away, descending into black nothingness, into non-existence. It wasn't painful, exactly, but it was disturbing, knowing that he was forgetting things that he wouldn't be able to call back, because he wouldn't even know they were lost. If he concentrated, really focused on resisting it, he could fight the drift, hold himself together with determination and stubbornness, but then the tracker would take advantage of him being distracted and slink closer; a few times, when he was fighting the drift, he would swear that the tracker almost got close enough to touch him with slimy, dead fingers before he realized it was there, and whirled to face an empty street, feeling parts of himself slide away the instant he stopped concentrating on keeping them in place. Eventually, he gave up on fighting the drift; he could hardly remember the point in fighting it anymore.

The radio in his pocket crackled and spat with static, and he knew that was important somehow, but he couldn't explain why. He wandered the streets of Silent Hill, aimless, glancing behind him, trying to catch a glimpse of his tracker but unable to, listening to the radio hiss and trying to remember the blond man's name. It had gotten away from him again, the man's name, and that disturbed him on some deep, fundamental level, but he couldn't be sure why. He wasn't sure why any of this was happening anymore, but he knew with a fierce certainty that he had to find the blond man, that there was something important he had to tell him, and that he'd remember what that was once he and the blond man were face-to-face. That was somehow important too, being face-to-face with the blond man; even with the drifting, the slow, agonizing process of being pulled apart, the blond man's face stood out in bright, clear distinction, the only thing that he wasn't having trouble holding on to.

If only he weren't so tired, so bone-achingly exhausted. Everything left of him hurt, throbbed with stress and exhaustion, but that damn tracker wouldn't let him rest, was always on his tail, always only a few steps away but never close enough to see.

After what seemed like years of roaming through empty, fog-filled streets, the drifting got to be too much, and his legs gave out on him as they forgot how to hold him upright. Harry slumped against a wall, vaguely aware that he was in an alley, sitting across from a chain-link fence, and put his head in his hands. The drifting was too strong, he couldn't fight it any longer, and the only thought that ran through his head, repeating itself over and over like a mantra, was that he hoped the blond man found him before the tracker did.

**2.**

The radio in James's pack came to life with a loud snarl, broadcasting loud static into the empty street.

"Shit!" James hissed from between clenched teeth, and pulled the pack off his back, dumping it on the ground where it landed with a solid thud. Fishing out the radio, he fumbled with the knob, turning down the volume and muting the static to a less strident drone, and held it to his ear. Broken plastic ridges dug into the side of his face and caught in his hair, and one of the dangling cords brushed against the freshly scabbed-over cuts on the side of his neck, making him suck in a mouthful of air at the bright flare of pain.

Nothing. No words broke through the static, nothing human reached out to him. He glanced over his shoulder, more from instinct than anything else, and saw one of the filthy, vile nurses jerking towards him out of the fog. She apparently saw him too, because she let loose with a high-pitched shriek and flailed her arms out at him, speeding up as much as her ragged gait would allow. With a sigh, he put down the radio, pulled the long wrench out of his belt loops, and advanced on her.

Once the nurse was disposed of, he returned to his pack. The radio was still making noise, and it sounded like it had gotten louder. James looked around, shining his flashlight into the fog, hoping the feeble light would be enough to penetrate the dense layers of grey, but he didn't see anything else, no other nurses or monsters coming towards him.

"If you're not going to take me to Harry, keep your mouth shut," he told the radio savagely, and flipped it off.

As he stuffed the radio back into his pack, he heard something float to him through the fog, something so soft that at first it sounded like nothing at all. James lifted his head and froze in place, holding himself completely still as if he'd turned into marble, listening intently. At first, all he could hear was his own heartbeat, thundering in his ears, and then… a faint, distant hiss of static. Static coming from another radio.

He fought every instinct he had, every part of his brain that demanded he barrel off towards the sound before it went away, that he drop everything and run towards the sound that might lead him to Harry. He fought it all down, swallowed it away, and closed his eyes to listen better, to figure out where the sound was coming from. He could swear that he almost felt his ears swiveling, like he was a dog or cat, the better to pick up the faintly burring static.

After several moments of focusing all his attention to his ears, of hoping that the sound wouldn't go away, that it wasn't his imagination, James opened his eyes and let all his breath out in a great whoosh; he hadn't even been aware he'd been holding it. The sound was still there, coming from somewhere off to his right. He slunk after it, struggling to move quietly and slowly, knowing that if the sound started to fade, he would charge at it with everything he had, stealth by damned. It amazed him how his entire world had suddenly narrowed to that weak, muffled sound, a sound that only a few days ago he would have abhorred and shied away from and now sought out like lives depended on it.

James crept along the side of the nearest building, following his ears, and the radio static actually got a little louder. He reached the building's edge and lingered there, hesitating a little at the mouth of the alley between the two buildings. The buildings towered over him, looming like indifferent, omnipotent gods, and the fog pooled heavily at the mouth of the alley. Peeking around the wall, he saw a chain-link fence barricading the other end of the narrow passage, a passage that seemed to lengthen and telescope as he watched. James blinked and shook his head, and the alley's proportions returned to normal, losing their fun-house dimensions, and he focused on the fence at the end. It was several feet taller than he was, made of chain links that had that eternal crusty layer of rust that anything metal in Silent Hill developed, and topped with vicious-looking razor wire that glinted at him like a smiling mouth full of fangs.

He didn't like it. That was a blind alley, and if he went down it he'd been leaving his back exposed to whatever might follow him. He hadn't seen Maria (or whatever thing had been masquerading as Maria) since she'd wandered off into the fog, but the thought of her coming back and cornering him against that fence sent shudders running down his spine. But what if that noise was coming from Harry's radio, or Heather's? Could be really give up this chance to possibly find his family because he was afraid of the things in the fog? Was he really a coward, like Maria claimed?

Deciding it was worth the risk, that if the sound attracted any nurses or other monsters he could deal with them, he called out down the alley, "Harry?"

The air around him seemed to freeze around the word, then sent it bouncing and ricocheting down the narrow alley, creating an echo that rose tremulously up the building's walls, tearing the name apart and breaking it down into its base elements, into a collection of disjointed, meaningless syllables.

Nothing answered, but he thought he saw something move, twitch on the other side of the fence. He waited, holding his breath again, staring intently at the area where something had moved, trying to pick out shapes from the shadows. The shadows stayed motionless, keeping their secrets hidden, and he was about to turn away in disgust, angry with himself at being fooled by the building's acoustics, when he saw it.

In the puddled darkness, at the end of the alley, up against another building, he saw a white hand flicker out of the shadows. It hovered in the air for a moment, then moved in a sweeping gesture that was as intimately familiar to James as his own face in the mirror. It was the motion Harry made when he was brushing his hair back and off his face.


	16. Chapter 16

**1.**

James didn't even realize he was running until he crashed headlong into the fence, making it shiver and chime musically. The razor wire above his head brushed against itself with a sinister rustling that almost sounded like gnashing teeth, but he scarcely noticed. Linking his fingers through the fence, pressing himself up against it as hard as he could, as if he could melt through it and be on the other side, he murmured, "Harry? Harry, is that you?"

As his eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, he caught sight of a human-shaped figure, someone slouched against the opposite wall, their arms on their knees and their head buried in their arms. The figure was about Harry's size, but there was something wrong with it, something he couldn't quite put his finger on, something that this place had stolen away from whoever it was. "Harry?" he repeated, doubtfully.

Then the figure raised its head, and James took a step back at the sight, unable to hide his shock.

Harry's face was as white as a sheet, all the color drained out of it, and his eyes were enormous, gaping holes in his face, empty black chasms leading into nothingness. Then James blinked, and Harry's eyes were there again, hidden by shadows, but there. There was a horrible blankness to his features, like James was looking at a memory of Harry instead of the man himself, like something had wiped away the finer details of his face and left behind a mask that was only a dim facsimile of the real Harry. All emotion, all the life, all the passion, had been erased from his face, and it was like looking into the flat, glass eyes and fathomless porcelain face of a doll.

"God, Harry, what did they do to you?" James asked in an undertone, hardly aware that he'd spoken, leaning against the fence again.

Harry blinked, and the reality of his face shifted, almost like an old-fashioned TV that had suddenly picked up a signal from its aerial, and James was horribly reminded of the monster in his dreams. Then Harry was clambering to his feet and lurching towards the fence. Even his gate was wrong, like he didn't remember how to walk properly. The closer he got, the more afraid James became; he looked like a drab, washed-out watercolor version of Harry, with no life, no vibrancy, to him. Even the colors of his clothing and his hair seemed wrong, like they'd been muted somehow, like the fog had saturated every aspect of him and was slowly turning him grey.

The Harry thing stopped about three feet away from the fence and simply stood there, arms hanging loosely at his sides, his dull, blank eyes on James's face. The Harry thing opened his mouth, and the muscles in his throat worked, but the only sound that came out was a low, hissing sigh. His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment; then he closed it, swallowed, and tried again. "I know you," he breathed, and his voice was like a faraway echo of the voice James had heard every day for the last ten years. He kept staring at James, and some life, some vitality, slowly bled back into his face.

James hesitated; what if he was wrong? What if this wasn't Harry, but some sick copy of him, the Maria version? Would this place be so cruel as to do that to him twice, offer him a deranged placebo of the person he loved and expect him to grateful? With Mary it had been sick; with Harry it would be an abomination.

"You're the blond man," the Harry thing said, his voice like wind chimes on a dead, twisted tree branch. "I know you… I've been looking for you…" He swayed on his feet, and for a moment it looked like he was going to topple over, and his face smoothed into a blank mask once more. Then he caught his balance with a jerk, and when he looked back at the fence, his eyes had lost that frightening emptiness, and James thought he could even see some blue, deep in their depths. "I… I have something to tell you…" the Harry thing said, and his voice had some strength to it now.

"What… what?" James asked simply, wanting to believe with all that was left of his soul that this was real, that this really was Harry. A Harry changed, perhaps, a Harry transformed, but his Harry nonetheless, real and alive and standing before him.

The Harry thing thought for a moment, his face pinched with the effort in an expression that nearly melted James's heart, it was so familiar. Then the Harry thing moaned, low and hopeless, and clasped his hands to his head. "I don't remember!" he wailed, shaking like a leaf in the wind. "The drifting took it from me, but I know that you're the blond man and I have to tell you something, and it's important, and I… I just can't remember what it is…" His words trailed off, and he stood alone, trembling and shaking his head back and forth, moaning deep in his throat.

"What do you remember?" James asked him, hating the sound of Harry hurting so badly, hating that the fence was between them. Even if this was some gross imitation of his partner, he couldn't stand the sound of him in pain, felt it tearing him apart in ways the Maria thing couldn't have ever done.

The Harry thing stopped moaning and shaking and stood still. He looked back up and met James's eye, and this time James was sure; the Harry thing's eyes had turned blue, had had life flow back into them, had turned into the eyes he recognized. His hands still on the sides of his head, the Harry thing considered him for a moment, and then moved one hand to indicate a spot on the side of his face, right where his jaw bone curved up to meet his earlobe. "You… you like being kissed right here," he said, and whatever life had reanimated his eyes had moved to his vocal cords as well.

James's hands twitched on the fence's links, squeezing them tight. "What else?" he asked, his voice raspy.

"You always sleep on the right side of the bed," the Harry thing told him, his voice gaining confidence and his words tumbling out in a sudden flood of remembrance. "You like to work with your hands, you're kind without knowing you are, you can't hide how you're feeling from anyone, ever, and you have a radio that used to be your grandmother's that you take apart whenever you're thinking things over. And," the Harry thing pointed at him triumphantly, "your name is James Sunderland!"

James sighed, letting all his breath out with a whooshing sound, feeling happiness and relief wash over him, emotions he never thought he'd ever feel again. Only Harry, the real Harry, would know those things, and they were all happy things, things that this place couldn't touch, that it couldn't recreate in a doppelganger's mind. "It's really you," he breathed, clinging tighter to the fence. "You're really here…"

Harry looked at him, and the smile that had started to work its way onto his face collapsed in on itself, and James felt almost scorched by the anguish and desperation that replaced it. "But… but who am I?" Harry asked, his voice cracking on the last word. "I… I can't remember anymore… I can't remember anything…" He ducked his head, clutching at his temples with both hands and shaking his head back and forth again. "I'm losing all of it," he groaned, "it's all slipping away…"

James pushed into the fence, like if he pushed hard enough he could get through it to Harry, could keep him from whatever was making him lose himself. "You're Harry Mason," he told him, hearing Harry's pain reflected in his own voice. "You have a daughter named Heather Mason, you're an author, you live in Maine…" His voice trailed off as Harry kept shaking his head, his fingers digging into his hair. That was Harry, but it wasn't. That was the Harry anyone could find out about with an Internet connection and Google, but that wasn't _his_ Harry. James swallowed and tried again.

"You're Harry Mason," he repeated. "You got that scar in your eyebrow when you swam into the side of the pool at your first swim meet… you can never sleep the night before one of your books get published, you… you are warm and caring and honest and good, and…" James paused, feeling the words catch in his throat but forcing them out anyway, hearing his voice crack and shatter as he did, "… and even though you've been the best thing in my life for the last ten years, I've only told you that I love you about five times."

James turned away, unable to look at Harry any longer, and rested the side of his forehead on the cool, damp chain links. Even now, when it mattered more than it ever had before, it was still so difficult, so painful, to be this honest, to expose himself this way. It briefly crossed his mind that if that really wasn't Harry on the other side of the fence, but some kind of monster concocted in this place's foul imagination, now would be the perfect time to attack him, when he was so weak, so flayed open, so vulnerable. It felt like his very soul was on display, and he cringed, waiting for an attack he was certain was coming.

Instead of an attack, he felt a gentle, hesitant touch on his hands. He glanced up, surprised, and saw that Harry had closed the distance to the fence and was standing only a few inches away. He brought his hands up to the fence and carefully, almost shyly, poked his fingers through the links and wrapped them over James's clenched fists. James opened his hands and, disbelieving, entwined his fingers with Harry's, holding them as best he could through the fence. Harry's hands were warm, alive, all the textures and nuances there.

Harry watched their hands lace together before he looked up, and his eyes and face were bright, lucid. "Does… does that count for six?" he asked, his voice timid and almost inaudible.

James clutched his hands through the fence, holding them as tight as he dared, not wanting to cause Harry any more pain. "No," he told him, "but I'm going to change that, starting right now." He took a deep breath, and everything that he'd kept bottled up since Harry's funeral came spilling forth. "I love you, Harry Mason. I've loved you since the first day we met, when you saved my life. I love you enough to come back to this place to try and find you, and if it turns out we can't get out, I love you enough that I'll stay here with you and be happy about it, for as long as we have. I love you enough that I'd rather stay here, in Silent Hill, with you, than go back to the real world without you. I love you, Harry Mason, and I'm going to tell you that every day for the rest of my life."

James's words dried up in his throat, everything else that he could have told Harry, all the times he could have told him he loved him but didn't, cut off as he stared into Harry's face, Harry's wonderful, familiar, loving face. The air scorched between them, the moment so intense that James wondered that the fence didn't simply melt away. Harry considered him, and he looked so bright, so real and present and there, that James wondered that he could have ever made the mistake that this wasn't Harry.

Harry took a step forward, closing the gap between them to the fence. He pressed himself up against the cold links, leaning into James with all his weight. He rested his head on James's chest, his ear above his heart, and sighed deeply, squeezing James's hands in his own. Harry held onto James as best he could with the fence between them, and James lowered his head, trying to rest it on top of Harry's but stopped by the rigid bars.

"You're the one I was looking for," Harry said quietly, speaking into James's chest. "I remember now. I was looking for you because I had to tell you that I love you."

**2.**

James held on to Harry through the fence for as long as he could stand it, then broke contact and stepped back, taking off his pack as he did so.

"Back up," he told Harry, who looked surprised but did as he was told. "I'm going to throw this to you," he told him, gesturing to the pack, and then heaved it over the fence before Harry had time to object.

Harry caught the pack, but barely, staggering under its weight. "James, you can't climb that," he protested, familiar exasperation creeping into his voice. "You'll cut yourself to ribbons. We can go around, meet on the other side of the building."

James shook his head; he'd known Harry would suggest that, but he also knew, with a tight certainty deep in his gut, that if they tried they'd lose each other again and whatever was happening to Harry might take him over before he could find him again. "No, I'm not letting you out of my sight. I'm coming over."

"Then do something so you don't rip up your hands," Harry told him, apparently remembering that it was useless to argue with James when he got something like this in his head. He set the pack on the ground and waited, watching James nervously, his body tense and thrumming with anxiety. "Don't hurt yourself if you don't have to."

James considered the razor wire. He didn't have anything that would completely protect him from those jagged spikes, but Harry was right; if he just tried to climb over, he would shred his hands to the bone. Harry was saying something about walking around the buildings again, but James ignored him, making a conscious effort to block out that voice that he didn't think he would ever get tired of listening to. Feeling just a twinge of sadness, he stripped off his jacket, the jacket Mary had given him all those years ago, crumbled it into a ball and then tossed it up towards the razor wire.

The jacket unfurled as it rose through the air, the arms flapping like it was trying to fly, and as it fell back to earth it landed square on the razor wire. The barbs grabbed the tough canvas material and held it, sagging a little under the jacket's weight. James took a few steps backwards, took a deep breath, and charged the fence, jumping as high up on it as he could, not giving himself time to consider that this really was a pretty stupid idea.

As he scrambled up the fence's links, James had a moment to reflect on the fact that he definitely wasn't a kid anymore; as a younger man, he could've taken a fence like this in under twenty seconds, but this was a lot harder than he remembered. He got to the top and heaved one leg upwards, planting his thick-soled boots on the razor wire and pushing it down. The wire squalled angrily at the rough treatment, twanging like over-tuned guitar strings as James got his other foot up and crouched on top of the fence. He held it gingerly, using the jacket to protect his hands, aware that he probably looked like some overgrown carrion bird, perched and surveying the world below him. He looked down at Harry, who was pacing frantically at the fence's base, fifteen feet below him. "Back up," he called. "I don't want to land on you." He waited until Harry was a good distance away, took a deep breath, and plunged over the other side.

As he fell through the air, slicing through it like a blade, James had just a moment to think that if he was over six feet tall, and the fence was fifteen feet tall, he really only had nine feet of distance between himself and the ground. Bad physics, but somewhat comforting as gravity grabbed him and angrily yanked back on what was hers. He landed on his feet, and for just a moment, James thought he was actually going to stick a landing for the first time in his life. Then the shockwaves rippled up his legs with white-hot heat and his ankle buckled underneath him. He crashed down hard on his hands and knees, his ankle already shrieking with pain.

"James! JAMES!" Harry closed the distance between them and knelt next to him, one arm around his shoulders, his other hand running over James's chest and the side of his head in a frenzy . "James, are you okay? Did you hurt yourself? God, that was a bad idea, I shouldn't have let you climb that damn fence, I…"

James took a second to get his breath, then rocked up on his knees, his long arms shooting out and grabbing Harry as he did so, silencing his frightened chatter. In one motion, he pulled Harry into his embrace, holding him against his chest, tucking his head into his shoulder. Harry's arms snaked up behind his back and clung to him, and Harry was in his arms, trembling and shaking like someone who had been lost but was now found. James held him like he was never going to let go.

Above them, still caught on the fence, the green jacket waved like a tattered battle flag.


	17. Chapter 17

**1.**

I tried to find her.

I really did, and made myself look and feel like a moron, running around in the fog, yelling for someone who wasn't there and whose name I didn't even know. "Hey, kid!" just doesn't have the same ring to it as actually using the person's name, know what I mean? Especially in this place, where it seems like names take on a new level of importance and become almost totemic, a way of keeping yourself when everything around you is trying to tear you apart. Not that it mattered anyway, because I couldn't locate the little brat. It was like she'd just disappeared, just faded away into the mist.

And with the kid gone, the monsters came back, roaring out from behind every corner, making the little radio I had in my pocket wail with static and giving the mini-crowbar I'd swiped from J.D.'s Man Cave a real workout. I needed a damn gun, is what I needed, but so far I hadn't found one. I also needed the monsters to back the hell off, because in all the commotion I couldn't tell if the radio static was coming from the pocket radio or the antique one.

Eventually, the flood of monsters slowed to a stream, then a trickle, and then I was alone again, breathing heavily and splattered with blood and monster ooze. Disgusting. The pocket radio kept whining, but it was quiet now, whatever it sensed far away and not an immediate threat. I crept up onto a house's porch and quickly stripped off my gooey, stinking sweatshirt and changed it out for the one that I'd wrapped around the antique radio for protection. I shivered a little when the town's cold air touched my skin, and as I shimmied into the fresh shirt, I glared down at the old radio.

The damn thing had been silent as a rock ever since I got here. "Why am I toting you around, anyway?" I asked it, and the sound of my voice in all that stillness made me jump a little. I prodded it with the toe of my boot. "You going to make any noise? Huh? Lead me to the daddies?" I realized I had used the little girl's word and shivered again, although this time the cold had nothing to do with it.

What had she been? I mean, besides an obviously sick little kid, a kid so sick that she'd been in hospice care? And if she knew J.D., who she must have met before he met me and Dad, and he'd been with us for ten years… what the hell had she been?

Plus she acted like I was an idiot every time I mentioned the monsters, like she didn't know what I was talking about, like she couldn't see them. And then as soon as she left, the stupid things are everywhere, like they were just waiting for her to leave before they came out at me. Finally, what kind of kid can just evaporate into the fog? I knew she could run pretty fast, but she wasn't that fast, I should've been able to catch her. For god's sake, she got winded just from yelling at me!

I sighed, and started stuffing the old radio back in my pack. I was just dancing around it, trying to rationalize away what I already knew, what I'd known ever since the little girl had mentioned a Hos-Spice hospital. I was focusing on that so I wouldn't have to think about what else she'd told me. The accusations she'd made. The kind of things that would keep me up at night for a long time; in fact, I wasn't sure I'd ever sleep again once this was all over.

Was J.D. really a murderer?

How much could I take the word of someone I'd just met, especially in this place that was built on lies and deception? After all, little kids lie all the time, right? I know I did, I told lies to Dad and J.D. all the time when I was her age.

I frowned, shouldering my pack and starting off again. Yeah, I had lied, but I'd lied about dumb shit, stuff that didn't really matter, like telling J.D. that Dad hadn't let me have any ice cream yet that day (a trick Dad never fell for, but J.D. could usually be convinced) or that I wasn't sleepy when I really just wanted to hear another chapter in my bedtime story. Kid stuff, the kind of lies that don't hurt anybody and that most adults can see right through. I knew better than to lie about anything important.

Fine. Here are the facts as I know them, since I'm obviously not going to be able to think about anything else until I get this sorted out. Fact one: J.D. never talks about his past, which means that there's probably some pretty terrible things in it. Fact two: he had a wife before he met us, and she died, which was obviously really painful since he only talked about her the one time. Fact three: I've been around him almost every day for the last decade, and he has never acted violent or crazy or like someone who would do something like that.

Except… except the fact three isn't entirely true, is it, Heather? I can't really say that the kind of guy who would slip his daughter a roofie so he could sneak away from her is a paragon of parenthood. But… but it's not like he drugged me so he could go to the strip club or anything like that. He was trying to protect me, which is kind of sweet when you think about it. Fucking infuriating too, but also weirdly, creepily sweet. Mostly creepy, but at least the intent was good?

I laughed grimly to myself. I was probably the first girl on the planet who'd been given a roofie colada with good intentions. By one of her dads, nonetheless.

I guess I just couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that J.D. was a murderer. I couldn't jibe my mental vision of a murderer (wild-eyed, babbling incoherently and waving around a bloody weapon; either that or completely detached, cold, totally in control of their emotions) with the way I felt about J.D. Yeah, he drives me crazy sometimes, and he's not the easiest person in the world to live with, but he's my James-Dad, for god's sake! The man who would play endless rounds of Mario Kart with me, who'd alternate with Dad reading me bedtime stories, who started talking to me like an adult long before Dad did, who taught me practical stuff like how to change a tire and use power tools… he couldn't be a murderer. He just couldn't, no matter what the kid said.

Besides, if his wife had been in hospice care anyway, it's not like she wasn't already dying, right?

**2.**

Harry felt the memories coming back to him, flooding into his head and filling him with what he'd thought was gone forever. He clung to James, feeling the warmth from James's chest flow into him, and opened himself to everything that was coming back. It didn't matter if the memories were a little distorted, fuzzy around the edges like photographs that hadn't developed completely or like a video watched underwater, or that some of the memories seemed to have stealthily shifted position and he was watching himself instead of being an active participant… they were back, they were his again, and he never wanted to lose them again.

Under his hands, James quivered slightly.

Harry leaned back so he could look up at him, but didn't let go. "Are… are you okay?" he asked, suddenly, absurdly shy.

James was too pale, his skin blanched almost translucent, and he was shaking, aftershocks of adrenaline from his fall clearly still coursing through him. He tried to smile, and his mouth hitched up a few times before he gave it up as a lost cause. "I'm cold," he admitted, and pulled Harry against him again, holding him like he wouldn't ever let go. "Cold, and I think I broke my ankle."

"I told you jumping was a bad idea." Harry reached out with one hand and felt around blindly for a few moments, until his fingers found the tough canvas straps of the rucksack he'd dropped nearby. He pulled the pack closer to them and opened it using touch alone, since James had his face pressed into his shoulder and showed no sign of letting go. "Is there a first aid kit in here?"

James's grip on him eased a little, and Harry pulled away and started digging through the pack. James watched him with dark, shadowed eyes, and then carefully shifted his legs out from underneath himself, wincing as he lowered his body to the pavement. "There's a bunch. Near the bottom."

"Here's a sweater." Harry pulled a heavy, dark blue sweater out the bag and tossed it to James. "Put that on, it'll keep you warm."

Obediently, James shrugged into the sweater, swearing softly as the rough material rasped across his scraped palms. Then he sat still, his legs stretched out awkwardly in front of him, and watched Harry raptly, drinking him in with his eyes.

Finding a first aid kit, Harry gently pulled off James's boot and examined his injured ankle. The joint was already starting to swell, and an ugly rainbow of purple bruises bloomed on the pale skin. He felt along it with gentle, prodding fingers, and James yelped in pain.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" Harry muttered, concentrating on the wound. "I don't think it's broken, just a really nasty sprain."

James barked humorless laughter from between clenched teeth. "Good to know."

Harry pulled out an Ace bandage and started to wrap it, pulling the stretchy cloth tight over the bruises. "Why did you come here?" he asked, keeping his head down so he wouldn't have to meet James's eyes.

James hissed a little and closed his eyes. "Your hands are cold. It feels good."

Frowning, Harry brushed his hair back and off his face; his hand felt normal to him, neither hot nor cold, just normal. "That doesn't answer my question."

"I couldn't leave you here."

"How did you know I was here?"

"Dreamed it."

Harry looked up from his work, surprised. James was watching him again, his expression serious and also a little disbelieving, like he expected Harry to disappear at any moment.

"You dreamed it," Harry said, his tone flat.

"Yeah. Every night, the same dream."

Harry grunted and returned to what he was doing, finishing with the Ace wrap and tugging the boot back on. "What happened?"

When James didn't answer, Harry looked up at him, and was a little unnerved by the way James immediately shifted his eyes away. "James… what happened?"

"What do you remember?" James asked reluctantly, cagily.

"I remember being home by myself, and a thing, a monster, showing up and stabbing me in the chest." Harry trembled a little at the memory; the drift had pulled his good memories away, feasted on them, but left that one perfectly intact, lodged in his head in all its cold, painstaking detail. "Then I woke up here. What… what happened back home?"

James pulled his legs underneath him and staggered to his feet, arms wind-milling to keep his balance. He tried to put some weight on his bandaged ankle and yanked it off the ground with a hiss. The sharp motion shifted his center of gravity, and he nearly toppled over again.

In one swift movement, Harry got to his feet and ducked under one of James's waving arms. James leaned on him, heavily, keeping his injured foot off the ground. "Thanks," he muttered.

"You're welcome." For just a moment, Harry caught a whiff of James's skin. The fragrance, which always reminded him of cedar trees warmed in the sun, with a faint suggestion of well-oiled, purring machines in the background, caused more memories to blossom and explode outward in his head. He breathed it in, and didn't notice how James shivered from being in close contact with him. "So," he asked, opening his eyes, "what happened?"

James studied him, then bowed his head so that his hair fell into his eyes, shielding them. "I got home from my class, and… and you were gone." He took a shaky breath, sounding close to tears. "Later, I dreamed you were here, so… so I came to find you."

"I was gone?"

"Yeah." Harry reached up with his free hand and brushed James's bangs off his face, a gesture that always got his attention. He turned his head and stared into Harry's face, studying him, like he was trying to memorize every detail, every contour. His eyes were glassy but he wasn't crying, not even close, which didn't jibe with the way his voice was shaking and trembling up and down the octaves. "You were gone. So, when I… when I knew where to go… I followed you."

Harry hugged him, nearly pulling him off-balance again. Once he regained his precarious equilibrium, James returned the embrace, holding on with a strength that was almost panicked. "I'm glad you did," Harry told him, his words barely audible in James's shoulder. "I was lost out here."

"I'd follow you anywhere, Harry. Anywhere at all."

**3.**

"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" I shook the pocket radio, really reefed on it, but it was no use. It hissed and burbled at me for a moment longer, then its sound slowly died, fading away into nothingness. The batteries were dead.

Shit. I'd just changed the batteries! Put a new set in before I left home! And now they were dead, and the spares were in J.D.'s pack and not mine, and now I wouldn't know when the monsters were coming and, more importantly, I was depending on the antique radio to lead me to my dads and it still hadn't made a peep.

I was in the business district (if cheesy tourist towns can actually have business districts), wandering towards the hospital like the little girl had told me to do, and the buildings loomed over me, the tallest buildings in this place. Someone from a real city, like Chicago or New York, would be completely unimpressed by them, but then again, Chicago and New York don't suddenly start spewing out bloodthirsty monsters and raving lunatic cult leaders. Well, they probably do, but at least you can call the cops there. Here, I was completely alone, surrounded by buildings that seemed to lean in, making a tunnel over me, blocking out all the light that barely penetrated the fog as it was.

"Just my luck," I muttered waspishly, and pitched the radio off to the side. Normally I don't litter, but this really isn't the kind of place where rent-a-cops are going to jump out and write me a ticket, either. The radio winged off a trashcan, and I watched as the can tottered, first one way, then the other, almost righted itself, and then collapsed onto its side with a tremendous clatter. Garbage spewed out of it and sprawled across the road, and the noise it made when it fell echoed and rang out like a beacon for whatever might be lurking in the fog.

I froze, my knuckles white as I clenched my mini-crowbar, and waited for the deluge of monsters I was sure were coming.

And nothing. The noise from the trashcan faded away, and no monsters came out to investigate. The street was as quiet as a tomb.

Except that Silent Hill is never really silent, and this sudden calm gave me a horrible case of the whim-whams. I started inching down the street, crowbar held out in front of me in defense, waiting for whatever was hiding in the shadows.


	18. Chapter 18

**1.**

Harry glanced up, his attention snared. "Did you hear something?"

James hadn't, but he'd been staring at Harry in a way that normally would've gotten him labeled a creeper, but was more understandable, given the circumstances. They were sitting on the steps leading up to some building that had been designed to look like a bastardized Greek temple… probably a bank or maybe a courthouse. James had done his best, but the pain from his ankle had overpowered him, and he'd practically collapsed as Harry had dragged him to these steps.

"No." He struggled to stand up again, ignoring the white-hot flashes that traveled up his leg every time he brushed his dangling foot against anything. They were resting, meaning they weren't moving, and the mere thought of what could happen because of that sent icy fingers crawling up his spine. It was better to keep moving, even moving slowly, than to stay in one place and let the monsters come to you.

Harry pushed him back into a sitting position. "Stay put," he ordered, using his Dad Voice. James smiled in spite of the situation. "I'm going to go check it out."

James's smile disappeared in an instant. "No!" he cried, almost shouting, and caught Harry's wrist with a vise grip. Harry gaped at him comically, confused by his reaction. "No," he repeated, more quietly. "You're not going anywhere by yourself."

"James," Harry said, frustration blooming on his face, "I'm not a child, I can take care of myself."

"You might start drifting again." Leaning on the stair's handrail, James finally got his feet under him and rose to his full height. "I'm coming with you."

Harry rolled his eyes at him, but relented. "All right, fine. But you're carrying the rucksack."

**2.**

I inched down the street, straining my eyes ahead of me. Maybe it was just my imagination, but the fog had gotten thicker, more soupy, and the beam from my flashlight just bounced off it back into my eyes. I couldn't see much more than a few feet in front of me, and with my radio dead and thrown away, I had no idea what was out there.

Not for the first time, I cursed this place and everything in it, for the way it had invaded my life and torn it apart. It was bad enough that it had stolen me and introduced me to a whole world of shit I could've done without, but to take Dad and then try and poison my relationship with J.D…. this place needed to be burned, destroyed, scorched to the ground, so that it couldn't hurt anyone else.

A sound wafted out of the fog, and I froze in place. Now I was straining my ears as well as my eyes, trying to take in as much information as I could, trying to create something out of this grey nightmare. I heard it again, and my fingers tightened on my weapon… it sounded like something moving towards me, slowly dragging itself forward.

A few lines from a poem I'd read in school flitted through my mind, as clear and precise as my terror: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Great, I'm probably about to get torn to shreds by a monster, and my life doesn't flash before my eyes, but William Butler Yeats does. My AP English teacher would be so proud.

Suddenly, the antique radio in my pack came to life, letting out a high, keening caterwaul that bounced and reverberated around me, revealing my position and making me a target for whatever was out there.

**3.**

"You have to hear that!"

"Yeah, I hear it. Sounds… sounds like radio static."

Harry gave his head a little shake, startled, and glanced up at James. "Is yours on?"

Shaking his head, James told him, "Mine is only on when it chooses to be on. Yours?"

Harry fished his radio out of his pocket and gazed down at it. "No, nothing. No signal." He looked up and met James's eyes, and James's chest suddenly ached to see the hope on Harry's face. "Do you… do you think…?"

Not waiting for an answer, Harry took a few awkward, shambling steps forward, hauling James along with him. Hobbled by James's weight, he stopped, panting, and then, before James could stop him, called out "Heather?"

A split second of silence, and then "Daddy?" echoed back to them.

**4.**

Oh God, oh God, I know that voice, I will give you anything you want, I will become a nun and devote the rest of my life to you if that's who I think it is…

I started running headlong down the street, completely oblivious to the buildings rushing past me, ignoring the still-squawking radio in my pack. If any monsters had jumped out at me, I think I would have clothes-lined them, just to get them out of my way. The wind whistled in my ears and the fog tattered apart as I ripped through it.

Up ahead, I saw… something, something tall and bulky, too big to be one person, but damned if that hadn't been my dad's voice, I would know that voice anywhere, and if that was a monster it better not mess with me, I would put it down if it got in my way…

This all ran through my head faster than a heartbeat, faster than two running steps, because I kept going and as I got closer, the fog relinquished its hold on the thing, and I saw who it was.

"Daddy!" I squeaked, my voice unfamiliar, high-pitched and childish, but who the hell cares? That was my Dad, my Dad who I never thought I'd see again, standing there and opening his arms for me, a disbelieving, sweet smile spreading across his face, his beautiful, loved face…

I didn't slow down; I couldn't slow down, couldn't have even if I'd tried. I threw myself at him in a full run, and even as I collided with his chest and drove him backwards, I half-expected him to disappear, to shred into pieces like the fog, to be a cruel joke put here to torment me. Instead, he took a few steps backwards and then hit something, something that braced us both up, and then he had his arms around me, holding me, touching my hair, saying my name, and I was crying, repeating his name, babbling inane things I can't remember, and none of it mattered because I'd found him.

Eventually, his voice broke through to me, and my frantic attempts to make sure he was real slowed and then stopped, and I just stood in his arms, feeling him hold on to me and listening to his voice, hearing it like it was the music of the spheres, something holy that could never be replaced.

"It's okay, Heather, it's okay, shhh, shhh, I'm here now, it's okay…"

Finally, I got enough control over myself to look up, to raise my tear-stained face up so I could look at him, and the sight of his face was something that I could drink in forever, that I could store away and survive on whenever life got rough, because there was so much love, so much tenderness, in it. I raised one shaking hand and touched his cheek, and it barely even registered how cold his skin felt under my fingers. "Where… where were you?" I asked, and I'm proud to say that my voice hardly shook at all.

He covered my hand with his own. "I was here," he said simply. "I was here, and I was lost. But you and James found me."

"J.D.?" I had completely forgotten about him, and a flare of guilt rose in my stomach. "You found J.D.?"

A quiet chuckle from somewhere behind Dad. "I've been here the whole time, Little Bit."

For the first time, I looked over Dad's shoulder, and nearly leapt backwards in surprise as J.D. swam into focus. He was standing right behind Dad; in fact, Dad was leaning into him, the two of us were propped up by him, pressing him squarely into a brick wall. His hair was ruffled and mussed by the impact, and he looked a little squished, but there he was, lightly holding onto Dad's upper arms.

"Can you take a step back? I'm kind of flattened here," he asked politely.

In a daze, I took a step backwards, pulling Dad with me, and J.D. moved forward with us, putting a little distance between himself and the wall he'd been pushed up against.

Dad shifted his stance a little, half-turning towards J.D., and opening up a path between myself and my other dad, my other dad that right up until now I'd still been furious with, my other dad who may or may not be a murderer. He was still leaning on Dad and propping himself up against the wall with his other hand, but he had his head down, pointedly not looking at me.

I took a deep breath, and slapped him across the face.

"Heather, what the hell?" Dad sputtered.

J.D. looked up and caught my eye. "It's okay, Harry. I deserved that," he said, but he was looking at me when he did, and I saw the apology in his eyes, and that desperate need for acceptance, for love, and I knew I couldn't stay mad at him.

"You're still an asshole, J.D.," I said gruffly, and then I lunged out at him with my free arm. He actually shied away from me for a second, and who could blame him, I had just slapped him, after all, but I caught him around the neck and pulled him down into the embrace I was sharing with Dad. I pulled him down so enthusiastically that I knocked all three of our heads together, but I don't think anyone minded. J.D. hesitantly put an arm around my back, then hugged me tightly when he felt me squeeze around his shoulders, and I felt him pull Dad in closer on the other side, and then all three of us were holding on to each other, comforting each other in this godawful place.

Even now, five years later, and his arms are still long enough to hold us all.


	19. Chapter 19

**1.**

"I think we should try to get back to the cars," Heather opinioned.

James laughed bitterly. "If you think you can drag me up the hill, I'm all for it," he told her. "If not, I suggest something a little closer."

Heather shot him a dirty look and opened her mouth to argue, but then thought better of it and shifted his arm on her shoulders. "Okay, where then?" she asked, and James could hear the strain in her voice, her eagerness to leave this place, her sudden, nearly frantic impulse towards speed.

Not that he could blame her, or even disagree. He felt that growing disquiet too, moving and writhing like a worm in the pit of his stomach. Something about the town had changed; the atmosphere had shifted, something so subtle that it was hard to put his finger on, but he was getting more and more jumpy the longer they stayed here, and he kept looking over his shoulder, not knowing what he expected to see but expecting to see something.

Harry adjusted James's other arm and leaned in closer to the taller man's side. Harry alone was unaffected by the change, and James felt both Heather and himself depending on him, depending on his calm, on his ability to be rational when all their instincts were screaming to run, to panic. "Do either of you know anywhere downtown that would be safe?" he asked quietly, and his smooth, measured voice was like a balm on James's feverish thoughts.

Heather laughed shrilly. "Is anywhere in this damned town safe?" Something in a shadowed alleyway caught her eye, and she cringed against James.

"Heaven's Night?" James suggested. "It's wide open inside, and there're heavy things we could drag in front of the door."

"Is it close?" Harry asked, and James nodded.

"Just a few streets down, if memory serves."

"Let's go, then," Heather said, still watching the alley closely and shivering. "I can't wait to get out of the open."

"Why?" Harry asked as they started out, James propped up on both sides and pulled along by Heather and himself. "I haven't seen any monsters since I got here."

Heather stopped walking as abruptly as if she'd run into a wall. "What?" she asked, her voice so low and quiet that it didn't make any sense to James why it sounded like she was screaming. "What was that, Dad?"

Harry looked around James, leaning out in front of his broad chest so he could see Heather. "There're no more monsters here," he told her. "I don't know where they all went, but I haven't seen any."

"None at all?" Heather asked, her voice bled free of color and inflection.

Harry shook his head. "Not a one."

James frowned. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen any monsters lately either, and he'd been looking for them. With his ankle twisted and one leg rendered useless by it, the only way he'd be able to take anything down was if he had the element of surprise, so he'd been combing the fog with his eyes ever since… ever since he hurt himself, which was right after he found Harry. And now, Harry was saying he hadn't seen any monsters, he wasn't even watching for them because the town was empty to him… James shook his head, trying to clear it. He couldn't think when he felt like this, so nervous and high-strung, like something was going to stab him in the back at any moment.

"Come on," he said, and took one awkward, shuffling jump forward, tugging on Heather. "Let's get to Heaven's Night and then we can talk about this, okay?"

Harry moved with him, but Heather stayed where she was, resolute, unmoving. James could feel his arm sliding off her shoulders, away from her, and he had a sudden, horrible vision of her getting swallowed in the mist, just disappearing behind them like… like…

He caught her chin in his hand, much the way her father often did to him, and she raised her eyes to meet his, turning her head deliberately away from Harry. James started when he saw the tears sparkling, unshed, in her eyes.

"J.D.," she whispered, "what… what's happening to…?"

"Nothing's happening," he interrupted, his voice too loud, jarring, in the still street. "Nothing's happening, but we need to get inside before something does, right? So let's all go to Heaven's Night, and we'll spend the night there, and we'll decide what to do in the morning, okay? Things… things will have to look brighter in the morning, right?"

She looked at him a moment longer, then raked the back of her arm across her eyes. When she lowered it, her face had hardened, making her look older, vengeful, and James realized for the first time that she had a warrior's soul, that she was probably the strongest of the three of them. She stepped up beside him and readjusted his arm across her shoulders. "Let's go," she said, her voice short and clipped, and started moving forward so quickly that James got dragged along for a few graceless, painful steps before Harry caught up and they found their rhythm again.

"Do you know what's bothering her?" Harry whispered to him.

"I can hear you, Dad," Heather snapped.

Harry stopped talking, chastised, and James felt suddenly, indescribably tired.

**2.**

Harry winced as he pulled the Ace wrap off James's ankle; the skin underneath it was stretched tight and shiny over the joint, and vivid, dark bruises blossomed halfway to his knee. He was starting to think that maybe he'd been wrong, maybe it really was broken instead of sprained. It looked like the kind of injury that would come back to have conversations with James on every rainy, damp evening for the rest of his life.

James was watching him closely, and he gave a long, low whistle. "That bad, huh?"

"No," Harry told him, lying through his teeth, "I… I think it'll be fine in the morning, just need to wrap it up again and…"

"You never were any good at lying," James said lightly, casually, and leaned back on his elbows.

Harry smiled humorlessly and shook his head. "No, I guess not."

James lay back on the pool table they'd perched him on and put his hands behind his head. "Just wrap it as best you can, as tight as you can," he said through clenched teeth. "I'll walk on it tomorrow if it kills me."

"I found some ice," Heather called, just as Harry was finishing with the wrap. "Ice will help, right?"

"Yeah," James told her, his voice tight with pain. "Ice'll help."

Heather sidled up next to Harry and gently rested a plastic bag of ice on James's ankle. "There's lots more in the back," she told him, "so if that starts to melt, let me know and I'll get you some more."

"Thanks, Little Bit," James said, then caught her wrist as she started to turn away. "You're… you're not still mad at me, are you?"

"Mad about what?" Harry demanded, perplexed. Clearly something had happened between the two of them, and he hated feeling left out, especially since he thought he could probably help them fix it if they'd just tell him. He'd never really understood James's and Heather's relationship; it was far more tumultuous than his relationship with either of them, and yet they usually got along pretty well. Maybe it was because they were a lot more alike than either of them would probably be willing to admit.

Heather ignored him. "I probably should be," she told James, "but I'm not. I understand why you did what you did, you know?"

James let go of her wrist and breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, I know."

"You're still an asshole for doing it, though," she added. "But you know that too, right?"

He smiled up at her. "Right back at you, Little Bit."

She leaned down and brushed a kiss across his forehead. "My father's daughter, James-Dad, my father's daughter." Straightening back up, she shot a quick smile at Harry. "Both of them," she added quietly, and then sauntered back to the front of the bar and continued to pile boxes in front of the windows, blocking the view from the street.

"Are you going to tell me what the hell happened while I was gone?" Harry asked James, feeling a little put out.

James shook his head. "You don't need to know. It's okay now, that's what matters." He linked his hands across his stomach and stared blurrily up at the ceiling. "I'm fading fast here, Harry… I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up when it's my turn to keep watch?"

"Of course," Harry told him and, out of habit, bent down to kiss him on the corner of the mouth. Remembering that Heather was still in the room, he hesitated at the last moment, hovering only inches above James's face.

James took matters into his own hands; one arm snaked up and he grabbed the back of Harry's head, pulling him in for a slow, deep kiss, slipping his tongue into Harry's mouth and stroking the side of his face with his free hand. Harry tried to resist, but not very hard, and let himself get drawn into the kiss, meeting James's tongue with his own and burying his hands in James's thick, heavy hair. For just an instant, Silent Hill slipped away, and it was just the two of them, together, and there was no one else in the world.

Heather cleared her throat loudly from the other side of the room.

Harry could feel James laugh, the sound vibrating up from his throat, but James was gentleman enough to not let it loose. His hands fell away and he let Harry go, although he wasn't above nipping at his lower lip as he pulled back.

"Good night, Harry," he said, a small smile dancing across his face. "Go spend time with your daughter." 'I love you,' he mouthed, clearly shaping the words so that Harry would understand.

"Our daughter," Harry corrected, and smoothed James's hair across his forehead. 'I love you too,' he mouthed back.

James smiled at him, a sweet, nearly disbelieving smile, the way he always did whenever Harry included him in his definition of family, and then waved him off. Harry got up and walked over to help Heather, not noticing the faint, bluish tinge to James's smile.

"So what happened while I was gone?"

Harry and Heather were sitting at the bar, the front windows finally blocked off with boxes. It was quietly dark in Heaven's Night, but somehow it didn't seem gloomy. Maybe it was the reddish torch-lights that glowed on the walls, or maybe it was the twinkling strand of Christmas lights behind the bar that Heather had plugged in, but most likely, it was because he was with his family again. James occasionally grumbled or sighed in his sleep, still sprawled across the pool table behind them, and Heather sat next to him, staring into the bottom of a beer glass full of water.

She looked up at him now, her eyes wide. "J.D. didn't tell you?"

Harry chuckled to himself. "He didn't tell me much of anything, besides… well, besides things that are between me and him." It still warmed Harry's heart to think of it, James finally breaking past his own internal barriers and telling him what he longed to hear. He could count on one hand the number of times James had told him he loved him before this afternoon, and he had treasured every time, kept each memory close to himself, recognizing it for the jewel it was. He couldn't remember very well what had happened to him before James had found him, before he had given him the gift of his love, but… he had been drifting, drifting far and away, and he shivered to think that if James had been even a few moments later, he might have lost himself entirely.

"Helloooo," Heather called, waving a hand in front of his face. "Earth to Dad."

He blinked a few times and then smiled at her. "I'm sorry, honey, what… what were you saying?" For a moment there, he couldn't remember her name, but that was ridiculous, wasn't it? How could he forget his own daughter's name?

Heather looked at him strangely. "You asked me what happened while you were gone."

"Right. So… what happened?"

She breathed in, deep and shuddery, and he thought for a moment that she wasn't going to answer. When she did, her words came out in a rush, and her voice was as raw as a flayed-open wound. "It was awful. I couldn't stop crying for days; it was like every time I turned around something reminded me of you, and I couldn't forget, but I wanted to, but I also didn't want to, I didn't want to forget your voice or how you smell or the way you look at me or anything. J.D. was wandering around like a zombie, he could barely function, and neither one of us knew what to do without you and it was like we were just… lost. Just lost and alone."

She sounded on the verge of tears, and Harry reached out and took her hand in his own. She clung to it, and then leaned in against him, putting her head on his shoulder and letting one rumbling, heartfelt sob escape her. Harry put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her gently.

"It sounds like you felt how I did when Mary died," he told her softly.

Heather stiffened in his arms, suddenly as rigid and hard as a plank of wood, and then she pulled away from him. "When _who_ died?" she asked him, her face pale and her eyes burning holes.

"Your mother," Harry said, confused.

She shook her head. "That's not what you said. You said when Mary died."

He shrugged his shoulders, relieved. "Slip of the tongue. Mother, Mary… they sound the same."

She kept staring at him, eyes wide.

"Come on, sweetie, let's not fight," he said beseechingly, opening his arms wide. "I've missed you so much, and I'm so proud of you for all you've done here."

She watched him for a moment longer, and then collapsed into his arms, pulling him up against her and hiding her face in his chest. "I just… I just love you so much," she murmured.

"I love you too, Little Bit."


	20. Chapter 20

**1.**

I woke up with my head in my arms and a serious crick in my neck. Groggy, I picked my head up and winced as sharp pains shot through my neck and into my head. Trying to rub away the ache, I couldn't help grinning a little; I didn't think I'd be falling asleep on barstools until after I got to college.

The light in the bar had changed. I could see through some of the chinks between the boxes in front of the windows that the fog had turned from a thick, inky charcoal soup into a pearly, dove-gray cloud. Another morning in Silent Hill, probably early, from the weak, hesitant quality of the light.

I slipped off the barstool, and my back joined my neck in complaining about their rough treatment. If I was feeling this crappy, I could only imagine how Dad and J.D., over thirty years older than me, would feel when they woke up.

Dad.

God, Dad. We'd stayed up late into the night, talking quietly, reminiscing, sharing stories from the past. Or at least, we'd tried to, until Dad ran out of things to talk about and had quietly withdrawn from the conversation, letting me do all the talking. I didn't even realize he'd been doing it until my throat was dry from so much speaking, and I noticed that he was listening so ardently, almost hungrily, to my stories, like he was trying to take them into himself and make them a part of him. Which was absurd, since he featured in most of them, but that didn't change the feverish, desperate way he listened, or the way he gripped my hand as I talked, tight and almost panicked, like he was trying to save himself from drowning.

I limped to the pool table, my legs cramped and tingling with half-asleep nerves. Finally, last night, when my mouth was parched from talking and my eyes burned with exhaustion, I'd pushed Dad to the pool table, told him to get some sleep. He'd protested, told me that I should be the one to lie down, but then J.D., still asleep, had thrown an arm over him as soon as he climbed onto the table, and he was a lost cause.

They were curled together on the green felt like a pair of kittens, still sleeping, their legs intertwined and J.D.'s head tucked into Dad's shoulder. It should have made me feel weird, seeing them like that, their affection for each other open and on display—the way Dad had an arm looped around J.D.'s waist, the way J.D. had pulled Dad in close to his chest—but it didn't. It made me sad for some reason I couldn't describe, like I was witnessing something that I would never understand, some ancient, protected secret that was beyond my comprehension.

I reached out to shake J.D.'s shoulder, to wake him up first because he'd be less embarrassed about being caught like this, but something made me pause, my hand a few inches above him. As I watched, he shivered in his sleep, the tremors wracking his entire body. I noticed that his face was ghastly pale, completely bleached of blood, and his lips had a bluish tint to them, like he'd been eating blueberries all night long, a tint that matched the blue tone under his fingernails. He looked like someone fighting off encroaching hypothermia, but it wasn't cold in the bar. Cool, yes, but nowhere near cold enough to create that awful, bluish-purple hue.

Dad, though… Dad was worse. His skin had a waxy, monotone quality to it, and it looked like all the pores and lines on his face had disappeared overnight, creating a blank, doll-like appearance. Something about the colors of his body was off, almost like he was a photo that had spent years hanging on a sunny wall until all the colors were pale and washed-out. His borders were wrong too, and that was what scared me the most; when I looked at him closely, they would solidify and turn into ordinary, rigidly real lines, but then the parts of him I wasn't looking at would waver, like I was seeing him underwater.

"J.D.!" I hissed, and started shaking his shoulder, probably a little more violently than was entirely necessary. "J.D., wake up!"

He swatted at me at first, trying to shoo me away, an impulse I remembered from all the other times I'd had to wake him up for something. "Dammit, J.D., wake up!" I moaned through clenched teeth, and shook him harder.

"Wha fu… Heather, stop it!" he finally muttered, swimming up from the depths of sleep. "I'm awake, I'm awake!" His eyes, blood-shot and rimmed with gummy sleep-seeds, fluttered open and he looked up at me irritably. "What's wrong?"

I grabbed his arm, holding on tight, and he winced as my fingers dug into his skin. "Look at Dad!" I whispered, nearly frantic now. "Something's wrong with Dad!"

He gaped at me for a moment, then propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Dad, and that was when I saw it. Seeing the two of them together like that… J.D. stood out, the muted colors of his skin, his hair, his clothing, bright and vivid compared to Dad, his body humming with life and vitality and reality. Dad looked even more faded, more dreamlike, next to him, and I realized that while J.D. looked normal, almost aggressively normal in comparison, Dad looked like something that was fading away and becoming part of this place. Dad looked like a specter that belonged in Silent Hill.

J.D. studied him, and I saw his shoulders lift and then fall, almost like he was shrugging unconsciously. He put one hand on the side of Dad's face, touching him in a lover's caress that normally would have left me mortified with its intimacy but today barely even registered—I was so afraid—and J.D. leaned down, close to Dad's ear, and whispered, "Harry. Harry, wake up. It's James and Heather, and we love you."

Dad's eyes twitched under his eyelids, and when he finally opened them I nearly ran out of the bar screaming; they were so empty, so vacant, so completely void of the man I loved more than I loved myself, that it was like staring into eternity and seeing nothing on the other side.

Then he blinked, slow and sleepy, and his eyes, his awful, fathomless eyes, flitted across J.D.'s face and settled there. He lifted one hand, the motions jerky, marionette-like, like someone who has never moved by himself before, and settled it across J.D.'s hand, which still cupped the side of his face.

"Jay… Jaaay…" he rasped, his voice arid and hoarse, sounding like the wind through a deserted street.

"James," J.D. told him calmly, still staring down into his eyes. "James and Heather. And you're Harry. You're Harry Mason, and you love us."

Dad blinked again, and then his hand tightened around J.D.'s, and as I watched, the color and life flowed back into his eyes, into his body, and he was there again, called back into himself by J.D.'s words.

I burst into tears and flung myself across both of them, clinging to their necks and shaking so hard I felt like I would tremble into a thousand little pieces.

**2.**

The drifting had gotten worse.

Harry could feel it actively tugging at him now; whatever force animated the drift, it had grown tired of waiting, had dispensed with the pleasantries, was through screwing around, and now it felt like every step he took, every motion he made, a tiny piece of him was left behind. His memories were falling away again, slipping loose from their moorings in his head and sinking into the drift. It had been worrisome before; now it bordered on terrifying.

For whatever reason, when he was close to James, or touching him, it was a little better. The drift lost strength then, and he could focus well enough to resist it, he could concentrate on holding his memories where they belonged and keeping his sense of self intact. Fortunately, although James's ankle was less swollen and painful today, he could only hobble a few steps on his own, and he was too heavy for Heather to support by herself. It gave Harry an excuse to stay close to him, to tuck himself up underneath James's arm and support him as they made their way towards the parking lot and away from this place.

They made a rag-tag band, Harry knew. Heather roamed out in front of he and James, armed with her mini-crowbar and a heavy Maglite, while the two of them staggered after her. James wasn't saying much, focusing on his stride and trying to conserve energy, and Harry found that the less he spoke, the better he was able to concentrate, to resist the insidious, cloying drift.

"We're almost there!" Heather shouted back to them, her voice light and joyful, sounding, for just a moment, like a typical teenaged girl. "We'll be to the cemetery soon!"

Harry looked around them, pausing to give James a chance to catch his breath. They were in the outskirts now, that strange area small towns develop where the homes are few and far apart, a mixture of old farmhouses and cookie-cutter transplant houses, an area that will most likely become the suburbs, given enough time, but is currently somewhere in-between suburbia and countryside.

James leaned on him, his head hanging low and his hair swinging in his eyes, breathing deeply through clenched teeth. His ankle was definitely better, but it was a long way from healed, and Harry could only imagine how torturous this slow, painstaking flight must be for him.

"Do you need to take a rest?" he asked, low and quiet, so that Heather wouldn't hear.

James shook his head. "I need to get you out of here, is what I need," he muttered.

Harry squeezed him gently, pulling him in closer against his side. "We all need to get out of here." He hadn't told James or Heather about the drift, hadn't wanted to worry them, but he could feel their urgency, their frantic desire to climb away from Silent Hill and leave it behind them.

James turned his head a little and brushed his lips across Harry's forehead. "We'll be…" he started, and then his voice trailed off, and he suddenly grew stiff and tense, his arm tightening protectively around Harry's shoulders.

"What? What is it?" Harry craned his neck to look in the same direction as James.

"I thought… in the fog…" James said indecisively, his eyes narrowed and alert, scanning the billowing, blanketing fog. "I thought I saw something," he finished lamely.

Harry peered into the mist with him. The fog was heavier here, some of the thickest Harry had ever seen, nearly as thick as when he'd tried to walk out of… out of… out of somewhere, but damned if he could remember where. "I don't see anything," he said finally.

"Must be my imagination." James turned back towards Heather and hitched the arm he had across Harry's shoulders. "Let's get out of here."

Harry obliged, walking slowly with him, supporting him like a human crutch, and wishing James had kept his mouth shut, because now he could feel it too; that feeling like they were all being watched, like something in the fog had marked them for its own and was tracking them, hunting them, waiting for exactly the right moment.

They'd hobbled for maybe another twenty yards, James limping gamely along and Harry cuddling up closer to him than he really had to, both for warmth and for the security of fighting the drift, when James abruptly froze where he stood. He stopped so suddenly that Harry was nearly pulled off his feet, and it was only the way James's arm had tightened, spastically, around him that kept him standing at all.

"What is it… now…?" Harry heard his own voice trail off, and he felt a vivid, electrifying bolt of terror rip through him. James was staring off into the fog, his eyes so wide that Harry could see the whites all the way around them, his muscles tense and vibrating as adrenaline coursed through him in a flood, his expression motionless in a rictus of horror. He looked so terrified, so much like a wild thing hypnotized by oncoming headlights, that his fear was contagious, and Harry could feel his own knees weaken in response, even before he turned his head and saw what James saw.

They were in the middle of an intersection, streets branching out around them in all four directions, and the street to their left quickly faded away into the thick, roiling fog. Just on the edge of the fog, where everything faded away into a uniform, pearly greyness, Harry saw it, and understood why it had riveted James's attention so thoroughly.

Whatever it was, it was huge. The fog rippled around it, obscuring its details, but even from far away, Harry could feel its menace, its strength, its awful reality. The drift would never trouble this creature; it had been made for one purpose only and would drive itself to the ends of time to succeed.

"What is it?" he asked quietly, irrationally afraid that the thing would be able to hear him, even from this distance.

"The… the thing from my dreams," James whispered hoarsely. "The pyramid thing."

Harry's feet felt like they'd grown roots, sealing him to the concrete. "Does it… does it see us?"

"Yeah." James shivered once, then got control over himself. "It's always watching."

"Hey!" Heather's voice, jarringly loud and irritated in all this stillness, drifted back to them. "What're you waiting for? Come on, we're almost out!"

Harry tore his eyes away from the creature and glanced up at James. James was still staring at it, but even as Harry watched, his jaw clenched in determination and his arm tightened, protectively, around Harry's body. There was something dancing in his eyes, something Harry had never seen there before; a fierce, proud resolve, a strength of will that James probably didn't even know he had, something that had gotten buried, years ago, under the weight of abuse and grief, surging to the surface and transforming him.

"Listen very closely," he whispered, his voice low but perfectly clear. "You can't take your eyes off it. It can only move quickly if you're not watching it, and it's your job to make sure that doesn't happen. I'll guide you, I won't let you fall, but you have to watch it at all times."

"Yes," Harry breathed, although the thought of watching that thing, seeing what it really looked like when it was no longer hidden by fog, made him feel queasy.

Heather's voice rang through the air, along with the sound of her footsteps as she made her way back to them. "Dammit, you geezers, what's the hold-up?"

"Heather!" James called, and while his voice still wasn't very loud, it carried a tone of command, and Harry heard Heather's footsteps falter and then stop. "Listen to me. We need to be very fast. There's a house up ahead that has purple light glowing out the window? Do you see it?"

Harry almost jerked his own head around to see this light, but James's hand closed on the back on his neck like a vise. "Don't look away!" he hissed into his ear.

"Yeah, I see it," Heather called, her voice rife with tension.

"When I say go, you run to that house. Get the door open. We'll be right behind you."

Harry heard Heather make a sound, deep in her throat, like she was getting ready to argue, then she swallowed whatever she'd been about to say and made a sound that was a combination between a jagged laugh and a sob. "What is that thing, J.D.?" She'd seen the thing on the edge of the fog.

"If you do what I say, you won't have to find out." James shifted himself, adjusting his grip on Harry and supporting his own weight. Harry heard a terrible creak and James's muttered oath when he settled his weight onto his injured ankle.

"Are you ready?" James called, and even though his voice was full of pain, it left no room for argument, or hesitation, or doubt.

Heather made that sobbing, laughing sound again. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm ready."

"Harry?"

Harry swallowed. He could feel it more strongly now, the drift, as it took advantage of his distraction, sucking away at what he had left. It idly crossed his mind that if he stumbled and fell during their flight, he might just dissolve away and evaporate into the mist before he hit the pavement. "Ready," he croaked through a throat full of sawdust and memories.

James's arm curled tight around his waist, and he thought he felt cool lips press against the top of his head, although the sensation was so light, so fleeting, that it could have easily been his imagination.

"Ready…" James called. "GO!"


	21. Chapter 21

**1.**

James took off so quickly that he almost pulled Harry off his feet, charging down the empty street with a wild abandon that belied the seriousness of his injured ankle, which snapped and crackled alarmingly every time he put his weight down on it. Harry stumbled and nearly fell, probably would have if not for James shoving his back, pushing him up against his encircling arm, and crying, "Keep looking at it!" in his ear.

Harry's view of the thing was distorted, jolting along as he struggled to keep up with James, running half-backwards, half-sideways, but he saw enough. The moment they started running, the thing moved too, and started lurching after them through the fog.

It moved slowly, dragging something that Harry couldn't make out behind it, but although its steps were plodding and heavy, they were full of a grim determination, a purpose that curdled the marrow in Harry's bones. He wanted to stop looking at it, tear his eyes away, and not only because it was so horrible, so frightening, but because he could feel the drift activating, ramping up its efforts, and his memories, his sense of self, swirled away towards that thing like water pulled down a drain. The drift became a tide, a whirling vortex, and even his closeness to James, even the blonde man's arm around his waist, his hip pressing into his side, wasn't enough to keep everything in place. Reality fractured, shattered, and his identity ripped away in great, bloody chunks.

The blonde man kept tugging him along, and was actually putting some distance between themselves and the creature. The fog curled back around the monster, and it became a dark grey shape in the distance, although Harry could still hear it, its slow, weighted steps and a screeching sound like metal pulled across concrete. The blonde man—James, dammit, his name is James—was breathing hard, his body damp with sweat and exertion, soaking through his clothing onto Harry's skin, and memories, languid and unhurried, started draining back into his mind, memories of himself, and James, and Heather, all flowing together in a confusing mishmash, a blur of colors and emotions. His eyelids felt heavy, his eyes burning in his skulls, and he desperately wanted to close them, shut out the monster and take a few moments to sort these memories, file them away so he could hold on to them, so that the drift couldn't claim him again, but… but James had told him to watch the monster, even if it was only a smudge in the fog, and so he strained his eyes into the distance and watched the thing, even as the hot, acidic tears of exertion burned their way down his cheeks.

James suddenly veered off the street, running to one side, and in one fluid movement he scooped up Harry and held him across his body, chest to chest, as he staggered up a short flight of stairs, before dropping Harry's legs and then leaning heavily against him. In that moment, short and fleeting as it was, Harry felt James's heart pounding against his chest, throbbing with life and energy, and he had a split second to wonder why he didn't feel his own before he was reeling under James's weight. James was propping himself up against him, sucking air into his lungs in great whoops, trembling with pain and exhaustion. In between ragged breaths, he choked out, "Heather… get that… door open!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" she cried, her voice close, and Harry realized they were standing on a porch. Heather was behind them, fumbling with a locked door, and Harry could hear her frantic, scrambling efforts now.

James took a few more breaths before pulling himself up and repositioning himself so that he was behind Harry, his chest pressed up against Harry's back, his eyes facing the street and the advancing monster, and his mouth close to Harry's ear. "Listen," he hissed, whispering directly into the cup of Harry's ear, "whatever else happens… don't let that thing get Heather. Let it get me, let it get you, but don't. Let it. Get Heather!"

The vehemence in James's voice caught Harry's attention, and he glanced upwards. He met James's eyes, and had enough time to see James's pupils dilate as he realized their mistake and swiveled his head back towards the street, but it was too late. The monster had closed the gap between them in the single moment, and stood on the edge of the porch, not five feet away.

It towered over them, its height enhanced and exaggerated by the enormous, rusty crimson helmet it wore, and its shoulders loomed broad under the triangular helmet's lip. Its wide chest was covered with a filthy, blood-stained leather apron, stretched tight across heavy, powerful muscles, and its skin was the color of a corpse. Harry only had a split second to take it in, to try and process the horror, before the monster swung one arm out at them and he heard the high-pitched whistle of something sharp slicing through the air.

**2.**

I had the door loosened, but the damn thing wouldn't open, I wasn't strong enough to force it free, when I heard J.D. gasp from behind me. A fraction of a second later, a blast of icy air enveloped me, freezing every sweat droplet on my skin, tightening it across my face and muscles, and I knew that the thing, whatever that awful, blurry shape had been, had caught up with us.

I turned instinctively, and barely had time to catch a glimpse of it (giant, hulking, oozing violence and death) before it swung one powerful arm out and towards Dad. In the shaking beam of my flashlight, I saw a bright glint of light against steel, and realized that it was swinging an enormous, wicked-looking blade right at Dad's head.

Time slowed to a crawl; I even had time to wonder if this was what being on LCD felt like, because I had time to see everything, in pain-staking, agonizing detail.

J.D. clenched his arms around Dad's chest, pinning his arms to his side, and then flung himself backwards, pulling Dad with him. Dad's head snapped back, and I watched as the blade whispered a scant fraction of an inch past his upturned nose, the air singing as the bloody blade parted it. I watched J.D. falling backwards, knowing he was going to hit me, but unable to move, mesmerized by the beaded condensation glistening on the monster's bare shoulders. J.D. crashed into me, shoving me back into the stubborn door, and with a long, low squall, the water-saturated wood gave way under our combined weight, and the three of us toppled through and into the house.

Time snapped forward again, and I was scrambling to my feet, yanking up Dad and J.D., ignoring the shrieks of protest from my shoulders. "Let's go, let's go, let's GO!" I screamed, half-dragging them across the house's wooden floor, slippery with age and rot.

Bracing one hand against the wall, J.D. hauled himself to his feet, keeping his other arm circled tight around Dad, who sagged, unresponsive, against him. The monster was following us again, hauling that huge knife behind it, turning sideways so it could fit through the door.

"Up the stairs," J.D. panted. "Purple light… upstairs…"

I reached out, trying to take one of Dad's arms, trying to help, but J.D. shoved me away, his face creased in anxiety and fear. "No!" he yelled at me. "You first, now go!"

I reached out again, unable to leave them behind, and J.D. pushed me violently away, nearly sending me to the ground again. "Dammit, Little Bit, go!" he screamed.

It was that name, that name that no one else ever called me, that broke through my mental paralysis and got me moving. I turned, choking back a sob, forcing myself to trust J.D. to take care of Dad, and started up the stairs towards the second story, searching out that glowing purple light we'd seen from the street.


	22. Chapter 22

**1.**

His ankle felt like it was full of hornets, pissed-off hornets, who were beating against the skin and trying to escape from their fleshy prison. His shoulder joints throbbed with the effort of carrying Harry, who had gone limp and boneless when the monster, the pyramid thing, had closed in on them. Something about the creature was affecting him, making whatever made him lose his memories worse, and James was afraid—so, so afraid—that if he didn't get Harry away from the thing that it would steal all his memories, leaving behind a mute, empty shell. So he soldiered on, dragging Harry up the stairs after Heather, his hands slick with sweat and sliding off Harry's leather jacket, his ankle threatening to buckle and send them both crashing to the ground at any moment, and that thing… that goddamned thing, closing in on them, beginning to make its way up the stairs after them.

At least it wasn't swinging its knife around anymore; there was that. But it was still too close, way too close, the stairs bowing and crunching under its heavy tread, the knife catching and ripping away at the stair's runner, sending little tufts of carpet fiber up into the air. It had to duck its head to get up the staircase, its helmet too tall to clear the low ceiling if it stood up straight, and James bitterly hoped that it would catch the helmet on the ceiling and go toppling down the stairs. Maybe then he could take his eyes off it and concentrate on what he was doing.

He nearly tripped and collapsed when he reached the top of the stairs, trying to step up and backwards onto a step that wasn't there. Harry flopped in his arms, his eyes rolled back in his head and showing white, and it was only through desperate, embittered determination that James kept his balance and got himself righted again.

"J.D.!" he heard Heather yell. "Down here!"

Getting a better grip on Harry, sliding his hands under his armpits and dragging him like a sledge, James staggered towards the sound. It was just his luck that the room with the purple light, the room that had to be their salvation, had to be their way out of Silent Hill (because if it wasn't, they'd be cornered by the pyramid thing and he was flat-out of ideas), had to be at the end of the hall.

He was halfway down the hall when the thing cleared the stairs. It was just like his nightmares—so tall it nearly scraped the ceiling, its wide shoulders blocking any light from escaping around it, a massive, powerful denizen of Hell itself, tracking him and backing him into a corner. As it started down the hall towards them, it raised its free arm and began beating on the wall. With each slow, deliberate step, it hit the wall with its fist, sending a rain of plaster dust down around James's head, making him cough and his eyes water.

He heard Heather whimper behind him, the sound of her voice closer now—this was the first time she was getting a good look at the monster, and he knew how her mind must be revolting against it, refusing to believe in the horrible reality of the thing… and she hadn't even seen what it would do to them if it caught them, and for that, he was grateful.

Suddenly she was beside him, her slender arms snaking past his and her hands wrapping around Harry's upper arm. He wanted to yell at her, to force her back (she didn't know the thing the way he did, she didn't know the fate that would await her if she let it get too close), but he didn't have the breath for it, and besides, he needed her strength. Together, they dragged Harry to the room at the end of the hall.

Once they reached it, James shoved them both rudely inside, not having time to be careful, and slammed the door behind them, using his own body, his own weight, to hold it shut. Seconds later, the door quaked against his back as the thing pounded on it with both fists.

Heather knelt on the floor, cradling Harry's head in her hands, weeping and patting his face, trying to wake him. He twitched a few times under her palms, and then, surprisingly, his eyes fluttered open and looked up at her, his face sharp with recognition. She sobbed once and then hauled him roughly to his feet, propping him up with her body, and looked at James, her expression expectant.

The door shuddered again, thrusting James forward as the monster kept pounding away on the other side. It wouldn't hold on its own; if he moved, the monster would come surging forward, into the room with them, and… and that couldn't happen. He couldn't let it get Harry and Heather. He saw them standing there, the two people he loved most in the world, the only two people he loved, and in that instant, he knew what had to be done.

Using his chin, he gestured towards the attached room, a bathroom by the looks of it, that was emitting a faint, purple glow. He caught Heather's eye and nodded, once, before he whispered, "Go."

**2.**

Dad trembled a little beside me, already protesting weakly, but he hadn't gotten a good look at that thing. I had, though, and I knew what was going to happen to J.D. if we left him here.

"We can't…" I moaned quietly, but my voice sounded feeble even to my own ears.

J.D. glanced up then, his hair hanging in his eyes, and he actually smiled at us. Exhausted, disheartened, and with that thing beating on the door behind him, and he could still find it in himself to smile. Maybe he thought, maybe he knew, that it was for the last time. "You have to," he said, and his voice was calm, almost conversational, so damn normal that it hurt my ears and my soul to hear it.

I could feel my lower lip trembling, and I knew that tears were running down my face in streams—I could feel them, hot and condemning—but Dad was still weak enough that I could drag him with me, and I knew that if I waited much longer he would come back into himself and fight me. This was our only chance.

"I'm so sorry, J.D.," I muttered, the last word turning into a sob as I turned and hauled Dad towards the purple light.

Behind me, I heard J.D. say "Love you, Harry. Love you, Little Bit," right before his voice was drowned out by another tremendous crack as the door bowed inward and a shower of dust from years of solitude rained down around us.

I love you too, J.D..

I yanked Dad into the adjoining room, a bathroom coated in filth and grime that looked like it had last been cleaned sometime when my grandparents were small children. I caught a glance at the toilet, which could have been a prop from the 'Trainspotting' movie set, and the sink, which might last have been full of blood, and then the bathtub, and there it was. Glowing on the wall, surrounded by the cryptic runes this horrible place loves so much… a hole. And through it, a normal, white-tiled, blessedly ordinary bathroom.

As I paused, momentarily stunned by it, by this way out (it flickered through my head that maybe it just led somewhere else in Silent Hill, but if it did, who cares? At least it'd take us away from the monster), the hole started shrinking. Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, but then faster and faster as the runes around the edges started to spin and blur together in a halo of purplish light.

Dad straightened up beside me, standing on his own two feet and supporting himself, staring into the world on the other side of the hole. I slipped my arm off his shoulders and took his hand, tugging him forward. "Come on, we've got to go, it's closing, we need to get through…" I babbled.

"James…" he said vaguely, his eyebrows knit together with concern.

"He told us to go, come on, Dad, let's move!" I yanked on his hand, hard, and he took a few stumbling steps forward until we were standing with our knees touching the rim of the bathtub. The runes were swirling faster now, the hole shrinking at an alarming rate, but Dad wouldn't move. He kept looking over his shoulder, like he wanted to go back, like he couldn't leave J.D. behind.

"We can't save him, Dad," I shouted, my words almost lost in the banging from the other room and in the thick, cloying tears in my throat. "We have to go!"

Dad turned to me and smiled, and in that moment he was completely there, fully my Dad, and if I wasn't already crying, I would have started. He reached out and pulled me against his chest, hugging me close to him, and I caught just a whiff of his cologne as my face touched his shoulder.

"I love you, Heather, and I'm so proud of you," he whispered in my ear.

I figured out what he was going to do a split second before he did it, but by then it was too late. He pushed me away from him, hard, and even though I tried to catch hold of him, my fingers slid away from the slick material of his leather coat. Even then, I might have been able to catch my balance if he hadn't hooked one foot behind my heel and twisted my feet out from under me.

I plunged backwards, through the hole, and my last glimpse of Dad was of him turning around, going back out to the other room, to the monster, to J.D..

**3.**

Harry watched as Heather disappeared through the hole in the bathroom wall. Immediately after her boots slipped out of sight, the spinning runes shrank down into each other with a bright spark of purple light, and the hole was gone. His daughter was gone.

He felt a momentary stab of guilt; he had no idea what was on the other side of that hole, if that bathroom, briefly glimpsed, was really as normal and safe as it had seemed, and he had thrust Heather into it. What kind of father did something like that to his own daughter?

The walls shivered around him, and he could hear the groaning of stressed wood and the high-pitched squeal of nails forced out from their moorings. He tore himself away from the blank bathroom wall and lurched out, one hand over his mouth, forcing back the thin stream of bile rising in his throat.

It wasn't that he felt like he had betrayed Heather by trying to protect her. It wasn't that he didn't know where she was now, and whether or not she was in a better, safer place. It was the memory that had exploded into his head when he had hugged her. He had seen himself, slouched over in his chair, sitting in a vast, spreading pool of blood.

It was the kind of memory that the drift wouldn't touch, one that would stay with him until… well, until. Just until.

He staggered out into the other room. James looked up at him from the doorway, shock and horror written all over his face. "What… why are you still here?" he sputtered, pitching forward as the door jerked inward from a heavy blow.

James. James, looking so small and weak, his arms splayed out across the doorframe, using his own body as a shield, trying to give he and Heather time to get away. Sacrificing himself for them.

Not knowing what he was doing until it was already done, Harry darted forward and slammed his shoulder against the door, lending his weight to James's. He could feel the door quivering and shaking under his fingertips, under his shoulders and back as he twisted to cover as much of it as he could; it felt like the monster on the other side was using its helmet like a battering ram. He had a single, nightmarish vision of the thing, hands spread on either side of the doorframe, leaning its head back to the very edge of balance, and then slamming it forward into the weakening wood planking.

Harry turned his head so that he could look at James. James's green eyes were wild and sparkling, but he wasn't panicking. In fact, he looked almost… confused. Confused and angry.

"Why are you still here?" James asked him, shouting over the noise from the door.

Harry grunted as they both rocked forward, their boots skidding across the thin carpeting; he didn't think the door could hold out for much longer. He opened his mouth, ready to shout back, to say something stupid, something that wouldn't make sense. Instead, the words came spilling from his mouth, unplanned, "For as long and as best as I can, remember?"

He might not remember what that meant (the drift, the fucking drift, stealing everything from him), but James certainly did. He watched as James's eyes widened slightly, as his mind made the connection, and he was shocked when the other man managed a slight, fleeting smile. "Yeah," James told him, fumbling across the door until he found one of Harry's hands and caught it in his own. "Thank you."

Harry squeezed James's hand and clenched his eyes shut, waiting for the final blow from the monster, the blow that would cave in the door and let the abomination into the room with them.

Waiting for a blow that never came.

After a few moments, a few moments that seemed to stretch into eternity, Harry opened his eyes and looked at James. James looked just as confused as he felt.

Afraid to break the sudden quiet that had fallen over the room, Harry mouthed, 'What happened?'

James shrugged, right before his much-abused ankle finally gave out on him and he slid down the door and onto the floor, his legs splayed out in front of him. Harry waited for another moment or two, but he couldn't hear anything out in the hallway. He couldn't hear anything besides James's ragged breathing and the pounding of his heartbeat, audible even from several inches away. Cautiously, Harry relaxed his legs and slid downward himself, coming to a rest on the floor next to James.

They waited. Whatever had been in the hall, it was gone, and the stillness around them was almost more frightening than the pounding.

James's head nodded forward; his skin was grayish, pallid, except for the dark bags under his eyes, and he stank of nervous sweat and exhaustion. Harry slid an arm around his shoulders, and James leaned gratefully into him, resting his head against him and closing his eyes. Stroking his hair with one hand, one thing that was sure to calm him, Harry whispered, "James?"

For a second, he thought James wasn't going to answer, that he was already asleep, or passed out, more likely. "…yeah?"

"I'm dead, aren't I?"


	23. Chapter 23

James sat on the bed, his back propped up by the headboard, his ankle sitting elevated by a pile of blankets and pillows, and watched as Harry investigated the room, the room that had become their world, their own tiny universe.

Harry had spent a long time in the bathroom, feeling along the wall behind the bathtub, tapping it, muttering under his breath as he searched for something, anything, to make the hole open up again. He'd told James about what had happened, how he'd pushed Heather through into the world on the other side; his voice had choked up a little during the telling, and he'd had to turn away, focus on the wall, for a few moments. Even with all his searching, all his ministrations, the wall had remained resolutely closed, barring them from the world glimpsed on the other side.

He came out of the bathroom now, his head hanging low, his face disheartened. "I don't think it's going to open again," he confessed sadly.

James shifted his weight a little, trying to find a comfortable position that wouldn't make his ankle throb with pain. It was a losing battle. "That's okay," he told Harry, trying hard to sound encouraging, "we'll figure something out." Despite his efforts, he sounded flat and depressed, even to his own ears.

Harry sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, his back to James, facing the door, studying it. "You never answered my question," he said quietly.

James flushed and suddenly became extremely interested in his hands, which had involuntarily clenched into fists across his thighs. "Don't make me," he whispered. "Please… don't make me answer that."

"It's not a hard question," Harry continued, his voice empty. "But I need to know, James. It's important."

"I know it is," James answered, still studying his hands. There were new scars etched across them, scars that hadn't been there the last time he'd seen Harry. He'd split the skin on his knuckles against Weasel's front teeth, had scratched the back of his left hand when he'd dug the radio out from the Jeep's dashboard, and further up on his forearms, hidden by his sweater, were the long, angry-looking scorch marks from the rug burns when he'd fallen off the couch. His bicep, hip and stomach still burned where Maria had clawed him, and the puncture wounds she'd left on the sides of his neck made him look like he'd been attacked by a vampire. Such a short amount of time, and already he was scarred, marked, by his life without Harry.

"So what is it, then?" Harry asked, and James felt his heart break a little bit more at Harry's sad, utterly hopeless tone. "What am I? Dead or alive?"

James swallowed, certain he wouldn't be able to speak around the knot that had risen in his throat. When he tried, his voice sounded jagged, hurt, like he was speaking through a mouthful of barbed wire. "I don't know."

Harry smacked the bed with one closed fist, his shoulders tense and frustrated, making James jump and then hiss as a bolt of pain shot up his leg. "How can you not know? Is it really that difficult a question?"

"Yeah, it is!" James snapped back. "You have no idea what it was like… finding you like, like that, then… figuring out what to do… Heather had to do all the planning, and no kid should have to do that, but I couldn't because we couldn't… couldn't make it official…" his throat was starting to close on him, but he pushed onward, expelling all the shock and terror and the desperate, aching loneliness of the last few weeks, "… and then, dreaming… every night, the same dream, about you being here… lost… and I knew I had to find you… I couldn't leave you here ah-alone…" and then he really did lose his voice, his last word a strangled choke. He gestured helplessly, unable to express himself with his scarred, injured hands alone; not that he'd ever been able to express himself, not when it really mattered, especially not to Harry. "I love you," he finally rasped out, pushing the words past the ball of hurt and isolation that had taken up residence in his stomach and vocal cords. "I love you, and… and you can't be… you can't be…"

"Dead?" Harry finished, and James gasped and nodded frantically; Harry had always understood him, even when he barely understood himself.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Harry hunched forward over his knees, James raptly watching Harry's back, waiting for any sign of movement, of approval, of acceptance of his pathetic theory. When Harry did react, it was abrupt, sudden; he covered his face with both hands and leaned so far forward that his forehead touched his knees and his shirt pulled loose from his pants, riding up his back and exposing his sallow skin. James stared, fascinated as always by the rounded curves of Harry's spine, the delicate ridges under a thin layer of skin and muscle; he remembered, once, a long time ago, when he'd touched Harry's back out in the parking lot of his apartment building, running his fingers over smooth, sun-warmed skin, and how Harry had shivered under his fingers, looking up at him with open, trusting eyes. Now Harry rocked back and forth, hugging himself and covering his face simultaneously, moaning softly like the small animals James's father used to catch in traps.

"I don't know what I am anymore," he whimpered, sounding like a lost child left out in the rain. "I'm here, but I'm not here, and the drift… oh, God, the drift…" He turned his head and looked at James with one wide eye, and James realized with something akin to horror that Harry was struggling not to cry. "I keep losing myself," he whispered. "I lose my memories… I lose my sense of self… I lose everything, everything that matters…" he shuddered, the words coming hard and fast now, "and all my memories, the ones I have left… they're not even mine anymore, they're yours, and I don't know who or what I am anymore, and oh God, James, I'm so damn scared…"

Harry's words dried up and he put his face back in his hands, his whole body trembling, and James realized that, for the first time in ten years, he was seeing Harry cry.

James slid down on the bed so that he was laying on his side, then reached out and put his hand on Harry's exposed back, thinking back wistfully to that warm, sunny day in the apartment parking lot. Harry's skin was cold and dry under his palm. "Come here," he said softly, sliding his hand around to Harry's side and tugging on him gently. "It'll be okay, Harry, just come here…"

Harry turned to look at him, his eyes wide and wet, tears just starting to creep down his pale cheeks, and James wanted to start crying himself when he saw the gratitude in Harry's expression. Harry lay down on the bed and pressed in next to him, into his waiting arms, chest to chest, his head tucked in under James's chin and his arm around James's waist. James pulled him in close, thinking how it was usually Harry who held him, protecting him from things he didn't want to remember, and how he could never repay the debt, could never give back what Harry had given him, but he'd be damned if he wasn't going to try. He held Harry tight against him, like he could protect him from the drift with the strength of his arms alone. Harry clutched at him, shaking like a leaf torn from its tree and buffeted by high winds, and James felt Harry's tears as they trickled off his chin and dampened his collarbone.

"It'll be okay, Harry," he murmured, lightly stroking the back of Harry's head and comforting him as best he could, wishing he could believe the lies that fell so easily from his lips. "Don't be scared, it'll be okay… we'll think of something…"

_Author's note: if this was a video game, instead of a story about a video game, this would be the point where the computer takes over and you get to sit back and watch the ending. I will post the endings to "Return to the Shadows" next Monday, but have no fear! On Thursday, I will post something completely horrible/awesome and unrelated to this story arch._


	24. Chapter 24

_Author's Note: This is one of two possible endings to "Return to the Shadows." Please read both and let me know which you one believe is canon._

_The epilogue is the same regardless of ending._

**Ending A - Running from Destiny**

The marks on Harry's chest appeared almost immediately.

James was still holding him, trying helplessly to get him to stop crying—he was amazed at how much it hurt, how agonizing it was to hear Harry's ragged breaths and feel his tears staining his collar, and he wondered if this was how Harry had felt every time he'd had a meltdown over the years—when Harry suddenly twitched in his arms, jerking like a jolt of electricity had run through him.

"What is it?" James asked, leaning back so he could look down at Harry's face. "Are you in pain?"

Harry, his cheeks still stained with tears, looked confused. "No… no, I'm not, but… but something here…" he gestured indistinctly at his chest, "… felt like something stung me."

James slipped his arms free, propping himself up on one elbow and gently holding Harry back with his other hand when he tried to curl back into him. "Let me see."

Still reaching for him, his eyes wide and plaintive, Harry muttered, "It's nothing, no big deal."

"Let me see," James insisted, and Harry reluctantly pulled his shirt up to his chin.

His abdomen and sides, though still fish-belly white, looked normal; it was his chest that made James's heart, already low, sink even further. Etched across Harry's even pectoral muscles, one on either side of his sternum, were two scars, two scars that hadn't been there before. James studied them, leaning in closer for a better look. The scars were flat, silvery, fading into the skin, and James, who knew scars better than he'd ever wanted to, knew the look of wounds long healed, of injuries done many years past. These scars weren't new, except that they were.

His mind flashed backwards, to finding Harry, finding him sagging in his chair, his chest a veritable mass of blood and gore, his skin bleached an even, blank grey hue. He remembered escorting Heather, a Heather so shocked and traumatized that she was nearly catatonic, to the hospital morgue to identify the body; he remembered fighting with the mortician, arguing with him in a voice that was all the more powerful for its lack of emotion, arguing that he should be the one to identify the body, to save their daughter from that, at least; the mortician, telling him that that wasn't possible, it had to be a family member, and that meant it had to be Heather. He remembered Heather, taking one look at the white, motionless body that the mortician had slowly uncovered and then shrieking, burying her face in his shoulder before nearly crumpling to the ground; she would have fallen, passed out cold, if he hadn't caught her. But most of all, he remembered the long, thin stab wounds on Harry's chest, cleaned of blood and stitched closed by the mortician's careful hands… stab wounds in the exact place of the new scars. The exact same place as the stab wounds in his dreams.

Harry tilted his head, looking down his front, and then ran one hand over the scars, his fingers trembling slightly. "Those weren't here before," he said, and he sounded sure of himself, until he looked back up at James for confirmation. "Were they?"

James shook his head. "No, they weren't."

"Where did they come from?"

"I don't know." James hated himself in that moment, hated himself for lying to Harry, for hiding what he knew from him. Did lies count if they were told with good intentions? Did it matter that he was trying to protect Harry, trying to shield him from the horrible truth, from what was going to happen to him? He wasn't sure. He just wasn't sure of anything anymore.

Harry yanked his shirt down and practically leaped back into the protective circle of James's arms. "Listen!" he hissed, clutching at James with a strength born of panic. "Do you hear that?"

James did. It was a sound he was intimately familiar with, one that had haunted both his waking hours and his dreams, a sound that he had hoped he would never have to hear again. Outside their room, in the hallway… the slow, repetitive scraping of a huge blade dragged across the floor.

Every day, the scars healed backwards. They went from being old, silvery marks that matched the surgical scar on Harry's torso to bright red, scarcely healed streaks, then to scabbed-over, wicked looking wounds that leaked clear fluid. Harry said they didn't hurt, but complained about them itching, and James knew the fluid oozing out of them embarrassed him.

They spent most of their time on the bed, holding on to each other, James carefully avoiding Harry's chest and Harry carefully avoiding James's ankle. They held each other tightly, as tightly as they could while still being gentle with each other, and listened to the constant, dull scraping from the hallway. The monster never tried to get in, but it never left either, constantly roaming up and down the hall, dragging its knife behind it, trapping them like a pair of frightened rats.

They passed the time talking to each other, whispering back and forth, an endless litany of memories, of times past, sometimes bad but mostly good, and always about the two of them together. James tried not to notice that as the days passed and the wounds on his chest grew more apparent, Harry spoke less and less, offering fewer stories or memories, until he wasn't speaking at all, but looking up at James with desperate, hungry eyes, holding on to him with the voracious strength of the damned and trying as best he could to fight the drift that was slowly stripping him away before his very eyes.

James woke with a start, shivering in Harry's cold embrace. He listened for a moment, his eyes still closed, hoping that the scraping would be gone, and then opened them with a soft groan when he heard it, loud and clear through the closed door.

Harry was curled beside him, still asleep. Even in slumber, his face was creased and pinched with the effort of fighting the drift. His skin was ghastly pale, and the edges of his reality had blurred again, lines running across his features sporadically, like static across a TV screen or through a radio's frequency. The only part of him that looked real, that looked there, were the wounds in his chest; they'd stopped leaking the clear fluid and had moved on to blood, slowly seeping and staining their shirts and the sheets beneath them. He didn't look like he was resting at all, but more like he had passed out, dragged under by the exhaustive effort of fighting a losing battle. Because James knew now—had known for a long time, but had kept lying to himself, nearly making himself crazy in the process—that it was a lost cause, that he couldn't will Harry back into being for much longer. That their time together in Silent Hill was almost at its end.

Unbidden, Maria's final words to him flashed through his mind. As she had walked into the fog, she'd turned to him, and he could have sworn that when she spoke, her mouth dripped with blood.

"You can't keep running from destiny, James," she'd told him. "You were always going to become what you were meant to become."

Maybe he couldn't save himself—maybe he didn't even want to save himself anymore—but he'd be damned if this place was going to get Harry.

He cupped Harry's face in his hands, and nearly wept when Harry moved, still sleeping, towards his warmth, towards the warmth that he could no longer produce himself. Would have wept, if his eyes weren't still so damn dry, so completely incapable of producing tears.

"Harry," he whispered, leaning close and speaking right into Harry's ear, "Harry Mason, wake up. It's James, and I love you."

He watched as Harry's eyes moved under his eyelids, watched as Harry slowly, so very, very slowly, drained back into himself, remembered himself, became real again as the cloying effects of the drift sloughed off him with sleep. When Harry opened his eyes, they were vague, lost and unfocused, but distinctly Harry, distinctly the same dark blue that James had once lost himself in. That he felt himself getting lost in all over again, even now.

"Good morning," he said quietly, marveling at his ability to sound so blasé on today of all days, and leaned in to brush his lips across Harry's.

When their lips met, Harry reached up and latched onto his hands, intertwining his fingers with James's, and James felt that little tug in the back of his mind, that small indicator that told him Harry was absorbing some of his memories, shyly taking them and incorporating them into himself. He didn't mind, he was happy to share them, would have given them all to Harry if he'd been able to; instead, he held still, his lips gently pressed on Harry's, waiting for him to take as much as he needed to feel like himself again, trying to ignore that he took a little more every day.

Eventually, Harry's hands loosened, and he pulled back from their kiss. His eyes were wide now, alert, and James tried not to fall into them, tried not to lose himself in Harry, because that would make today only that much harder. Tried, and failed.

"James," Harry breathed, and smiled up at him.

"Harry," James said, trying to control the quiver in his voice, and failing at that too. "We… we need to talk."

"About what?" Harry asked innocently, his eyes already starting to glaze over as the drift began anew.

"About… about what brought me here."

James told him about the dream, the dream that had brought him back to Silent Hill, not leaving out a single detail, even though it hurt more than he thought it would to talk about it. Hell, this whole thing hurt worse than he thought it would, so much worse, tearing him apart inside with countless tiny barbs, more agonizing than anything his father had ever done to him, worse even than when he remembered what had really happened to Mary. He thought that loss might get easier with practice, but if anything, it got worse.

He finished talking, and looked at Harry expectantly.

"No," Harry said immediately, and James loved him a little bit more for not even taking time to think about it. "No, that's not a solution."

"It's the only solution."

"It's not!" Harry insisted. "We can find another way!"

"There isn't another way," James told him. He laid one hand on Harry's chest, left it there for a moment, then pulled it away and showed it to him. The palm was sticky with bright red, arterial blood. "You've only got a little while until those open up, become the wounds that…" the word stuck in his throat, and he couldn't finish. "We don't have much time," he finished lamely.

Harry got out of bed and started pacing, his movements jerky, his former leonine grace completely gone, stolen by the drift. "There has to be another way," he fretted, running his hands through his hair.

"There isn't," James repeated. "This is how it has to be."

"How can you be so certain?" Harry asked him, shooting him a dark look. "How do you know?"

James laughed humorlessly. "I've been running from this place for ten years. I think I know."

"It's not right!" Harry cried, his voice spiraling upwards into a shout. "It's not right that… that after everything we've been through…"

"Nothing about this place is right."

"I won't do it," Harry declared, stopping his pacing and standing in front of James, his arms crossed over his drenched chest.

"You will."

"I won't. I can't."

"You will, or…" James hesitating, hating to resort to this, "or I'll stop calling you back into yourself. The drift will take you, and whatever happens, you won't have any memories of being Harry Mason."

Harry gaped at him. "You're bluffing."

James shrugged. "Maybe. Do you really want to try me?"

Harry gulped, suddenly struggling against tears again, and James almost relented right then. "Why are you being like this?" he asked plaintively, and the sound of his pleading ripped James's heart in two.

"Oh, dammit, Harry, come here," and Harry was in his arms again, shaking with fear and clinging to him like a child. "Harry, don't you get it?" he asked, stroking his back, feeling that beautiful spine under his fingers. "We do it your way, and you become one of those monsters and kill me. We do it my way, and you go… somewhere, and the monster in the hallway kills me. Either way, I end up dead. I'd rather… I'd rather be dead and know that you're waiting for me… wherever you went."

Harry twisted in his arms and looked up at him. "You don't believe that," he said flatly.

James held him close again. "No," he admitted, "not for me. But… if I can save you, Harry… if something has to kill me, I don't want it to be you."

Harry, tense and rigid in his arms, suddenly relaxed and wrapped his arms around his waist. "I hate it," he muttered into James's chest. "I hate that it's come to this."

"Me too," James told him. "But at least… at least I get to be with you one last time."

"Goddammit, James!" And Harry was crying again, his tears silent but steady, and James comforted him as best he could, wishing that he could cry too.

"I don't think I can do it," Harry blurted, when his tears had finally dried up and he was huddled, trembling, in James's arms. "I've never felt less sexy in my life."

"Don't be ridiculous," James told him bluntly. "We've both been hard as rocks for the last two days and you know it."

Harry glanced up at him, startled by the crude words, and then he blushed—he remembered enough of himself to blush—and for just a second James wondered if this really was right, if this would work out the way he hoped (the way he prayed) it would. Was there another way? Was there something he was overlooking, something he hadn't thought of? Could he be wrong about this place's horrible power, its pull? Did he really think they could beat it at its own game?

It didn't matter; if they waited much longer, it would be too late.

"James," Harry started, and he suddenly had his icy hands on James's cheeks, tugging his face down so that they were eye-to-eye, a gesture, a tendency, so ingrained in him that even the drift hadn't been able to pull it away. "James," he repeated, "when I lost myself before… when you found me in the alley… I didn't remember anything. I was almost gone, almost completely lost."

"I know," James told him, shuddering at the memory. If he'd been even a few minutes later…

"You know, but you don't know," Harry told him. "I couldn't remember your name, or Heather, or anything about my life. I couldn't even remember my own name. But… but…" He paused, and James watched the internal struggle as he tried to pull the words he wanted out of the misty haze in his head. "But I remembered your face," he finally finished. "I couldn't even remember myself, but I remembered your face."

Harry looked up at him expectantly, and got perturbed when James didn't immediately respond. "Don't you get it? When everything else is gone… I'll still remember you."

James leaned in and kissed Harry's forehead; it felt like he'd kissed a block of ice. Without another word, he gently shuffled Harry off to one side and stood up, balancing precariously on one leg. With fingers as numb and fumbling as blocks of wood, he started to strip down.

He didn't bother with trying to make it look evocative; it was all he could do to work the buttons on his pants or to get the sweater over his head. Everything hurt, both with the ache of overwork and strain and the deeper, more insidious pain of knowing what was about to happen. He'd honestly let himself believe that he and Harry would have time together, a lifetime even, and now that he knew that wasn't true, it felt like his very bones were rebelling against that bitter knowledge, trying to prevent him from doing what had to be done. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Harry was shyly, reluctantly, removing his own clothing, although he left his undershirt on, keeping the seeping, hideous wounds on his chest covered.

James's pants whispered over his legs and fell to the floor in a heap, his belt whickering out from its loops and dangling from his hand. He collapsed back onto the bed, some dim corner of his mind thankful to be off his feet again, and slowly looped the belt around his neck, pulling the long tab through the buckle until it hung in front of him like a tie. He hated the feel of the cold buckle against his neck; its wintry kiss on his skin dredging up old memories, things he'd spent a lifetime trying to forget. Now, for the first time, he clung to those memories, those ancient, shadowed places, hoping to exchange one agony for another, more familiar hurt. Turning his back to Harry, he climbed onto the bed and crouched on his hands and knees.

Harry, who had been watching curiously, recoiled away from him, making the bed creak as he shifted his weight. "What are you doing?" he asked, and James was amazed at what the drift had left intact. Harry had learned, early on in their relationship, to not take this position himself, because something about it was like a bucket of icy water to James's sex drive, and James had made it very, very clear that he should never try and maneuver him into it either. It was an unspoken rule between them, a forbidden taboo, something that just wasn't done.

James looked at him from over his shoulder, hoping that Harry wouldn't notice how his arms were shaking, his muscles remembering the old terror that his brain had fought to suppress. "It has to be this way," he said simply. Harry looked at him doubtfully, and James wondered if one of his memories that he didn't want to share (that he couldn't share) had slipped into Harry's mind along with the ones that helped him maintain his sense of self. But that was ludicrous, there weren't any connections between Harry and what they did together and… and that. He might not be the smartest person, but he knew enough to keep those memories separate from his memories of Harry; hell, he'd built the mental equivalent of a giant fucking fence between the two groups.

Harry got onto his knees and awkwardly shuffled over behind him, and James couldn't suppress a shudder when he felt Harry's cold hands on his hips. Harry felt him shaking, and immediately pulled his hands away. "I'm sorry," he muttered, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

"Don't be," James managed to gasp. "Not your fault." He picked up the end of his belt and flipped it over his shoulder so that it draped across his back. "Here."

Harry picked it up, mystified. "What's this for?"

James put his head back down, bracing himself, feeling the scar on his forehead burn with remembered pain, and he had to force the words out. "If I can't breathe right, I can't fight you."

"Jesus Christ, James, I'm not going to rape you!" Harry's voice was so strong, so vehement, that James glanced over his shoulder, and in his anger, Harry looked so bright, so aggressively present and real, that James wondered if this really was the way it had to be—were they doing the right thing? Could Maria have been wrong?

Then Harry winced and brought a hand to his forehead, his eyes closed, and he leaned forward onto James, propping himself up with his other hand. James tried not to shiver when Harry's cold thighs bumped up against his own, but it was all he could do to not cringe away.

Harry stayed that way, frozen like a statue, for a few moments, and when he took his hand away from his face, his eyes were blank, lost and glassy again, and he looked at James with polite confusion.

"I'm James," James said quietly, feeling the last of his hope slide away, "and you're Harry, and I love you."

Slowly (so slowly), recognition dawned on Harry's features, and he smiled crookedly, painfully, at James. "I'm sorry," he muttered, "lost myself there for a minute."

James put his head back down, trying to forget what he'd just seen; he'd seen through Harry, had been able to see the room behind him, like Harry's body had turned into smoky glass. "Please," he whispered through clenched teeth, "just get it over with."

He'd wanted it to go fast, would have welcomed speed and violence and pain; but Harry, even now, wasn't capable of those things. He went slow, gentle, giving away time that they didn't have so that James was comfortable, unharmed physically even though it was tearing him apart mentally. James kept his eyes shut, trying to dredge up something, anything, that would make this easier to bear, even if what he called came howling out of his subconscious like a winter storm, but… but he could never forget that it was Harry behind him, Harry who had saved him so many times, Harry who had given him his life back, Harry who had… who had… Harry who had loved him. Harry, who could look past how decimated, how broken, he was, and find some spark of good that James himself had forgotten was ever there. Harry, who had rebuilt him, created a world around him, given him gifts immeasurable while acting like he was giving away nothing at all. While acting like it was James who was giving something to him.

Harry's skin against his got progressively colder, its textures smoothing away until it felt like he was being held by something made out of glass. His eyes still closed, James felt Harry lean across his back, wrapping his arms around his waist, and then kissing him, softly, between his shoulder blades. He remembered, in a flash so brilliant it was almost painful, the last time Harry had kissed him there—in their sun-dappled bedroom, when they'd still had the rest of their lives ahead of them—and somehow, that bright, perfect memory broke the floodgates. All the tears he'd held back, everything he wished he could have gotten out, came streaming out of his eyes all at once, and he was weeping, weeping deeply and hopelessly, his entire body shaking with the effort.

With fingers as cool and insubstantial as smoke, Harry brushed the tears off James's cheeks. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and he already sounded far-away.

"I love you," James choked out, forcing the words past the tears, but it was already too late. Harry was gone.

James crumpled forward onto the bed, his arms collapsing under him, and he curled into a ball, sobbing despondently into his hands.

He stayed that way, curled into himself, even as he felt the spot between his shoulder blades, the place of Harry's final kiss, grow cold, until it was so cold that it almost felt like burning. He stayed that way, weeping quietly, desperately, as the cold, cold enough to feel like fire rippling across his skin, started to spread outward, crawling across his back and down his legs. He stayed curled up, crying, until the cold reached his hands and his hot tears made it even more painful, and then he pulled back and saw how his skin had turned grey, lifeless, and how his scars stood out on the dead greyness like a relief map for Hell.

James got his arms underneath him and sat up, kneeling on the bed, and watched the greyness spread, watched it envelop his chest and creep upwards towards his face, and his tears slowly turned into laughter, the raving, lunatic laughter of the forgotten and the damned.

It was only when the belt, still hanging around his neck, started to twitch and grow, changing from leather into red, dirty metal, that he started to scream.

_Epilogue_

I don't know how long I beat on that bathroom wall, screamed at it, pleaded with it, scratched at it in desperation until my fingernails were broken and my hands were bloody. Whatever I did, it remained resolutely closed to me, the runes and the hole refusing to reappear, refusing to take me back to Silent Hill. Back to my dads… or whatever was left of them.

I must have eventually worn myself down and passed out in exhaustion, because I was startled back into consciousness by something clattering off the tile floor. It sounded like a machine gun going off in the enclosed space, and my instincts kicked in before I could remember where I was. I scrambled to my feet, one hand out defensively, the other one grabbing out in the air for a weapon that should have been there. My eyes were spinning, both from fatigue and stress, and all I saw was a tall figure standing in the doorway, looming threateningly before me.

"Uh… I'm not going to hurt you," an unfamiliar voice said.

For some reason, that started to calm me down. The monsters in Silent Hill wouldn't bother lying to get close, they'd just go for my face. I stopped feeling for a weapon (the best I'd found anyway was a half-empty bottle of shampoo), and blinked rapidly, trying to clear my eyes and ignore the blood thundering in my ears.

There was a young guy standing in the bathroom's doorway, his hands raised, palms towards me. The clattering sound had been a box of bathroom stuff that he'd obviously dropped, exploding and scattering across the floor.

"Did this used to be your apartment?" he asked as I studied him.

"Where are we?" I asked him, stalling for time. He didn't look like a psycho, he actually looked almost painfully average. Tallish, pale, wearing jeans and a white shirt… the only thing that stood out about him was his hair, mussed and carefully crafted into that 'I just stumbled out of bed' look that screams 'douche.' He hadn't shaved either, probably on purpose. Or maybe because I was in his bathtub.

"Ashfield, Maine," he told me. "United States," he added helpfully after a moment's thought.

I tried to climb out of the tub and nearly fell; my legs and back were stiff and aching with pain after spending one night asleep on a bar stool and another in a bathtub. He started to try and catch me, but hesitated at the last minute, like his instincts had taken over for a second before his brain could warn him that crazy might be catching.

"What's your name?" he asked, backing up as I started staggering towards the door.

"Heather," I told him shortly, blundering through the apartment. I knew where Ashfield was; Silent Hill was only about ten miles up the road. My wallet and car keys swung heavily in my pant's pocket. I could be there in under an hour if I hurried.

"I'm Henry," he told me, trailing after me, probably wanting to make sure I didn't take any of his stuff. Not that I'd be interested in it; looked like he'd just moved in, everything was still in boxes, and there wasn't a lot of it. He didn't have anything I wanted—all I wanted was to get back to Silent Hill and find out what the hell had happened.

My chest clenched up on me, and I nearly toppled over from the unexpected pain. We'd been so close, Dad and I, so close to getting out of there, and he'd gone back. I shouldn't have been surprised; deep down, I knew that he would never leave J.D. behind, and mixed in with all the sadness that swirled inside me, there was also some shame…. I'd been so quick to dismiss him, to try and get the hell out of there with Dad. Even though Dad was… was… not really Dad anymore, but goddammit, that didn't matter!

"You okay?" Henry asked, sliding up beside me. "You look like you're going to pass out."

"No," I managed, shoving the word out through my tight throat. "I… I'm not… I need to get to Silent Hill." Suddenly, there wasn't anything more urgent in my life.

He looked at me doubtfully. "There's a bus line in front of the complex that heads out that way."

"Thanks." I stumbled towards the door, then thought better of it. I turned around to face Henry, and he stared back at me solemnly. He might have stupid hair, but he hadn't called the cops on me, so he had that in his favor. Actually, he was taking this whole situation remarkably well. "Has anything… weird been happening around here?" I asked him.

He cracked a smile at me. "You mean besides you showing up in my tub?"

"Besides that."

"No, nothing out of the ordinary." He shrugged. "I haven't been here long, though."

I furrowed my brow in thought. "Do you have a pen and paper?"

Surprisingly, he didn't question my bizarre request, and wordlessly dug around in a box for a minute before handing me a scrap of paper and a pencil nub. I scrawled my name on it, along with both my cell phone number and the number at the house.

"Here." I gave it to him. "If anything… strange starts happening here, you call me immediately, okay?" He nodded, and that simple gesture brought tears to my eyes. He was just so damn normal, so ordinary, like we'd been a few weeks ago. "Especially if you see… if you see… a tall blonde guy and a shorter, dark-haired guy hanging around, okay?" Then I was lost, sobbing again, and I turned and ran out the door, slamming it behind me.

Henry watched from the window as the strange young girl staggered out onto the lawn. She made her way to the bus stop okay, and waited there, her arms wrapped around herself. He watched until she got on the bus; at the last moment, she turned around and looked back towards the complex, and even though he knew she couldn't see him, he waved half-heartedly anyway.

As the bus pulled away, he glanced down at the piece of paper she'd given him. He looked at it for a moment before crumpling it in his palm and tossing it out the window with a snort.

Why were the pretty ones always insane?

_Author's Note: So that's the end! Thank you so much for reading! If you are interested in such things, I have a question-and-answer post up on deviantArt where you can ask me about the story or whatever else you want. My username over there is MissAzrael._


	25. Chapter 25

_Author's note: This is one of two endings for "Return to the Shadows." Please read both and let me know which one you believe is canon._

_The epilogue is the same regardless of ending._

**Ending 1- Second Chances**

Later, after it was all over, James would never be entirely sure how much time they spent in that windowless room. They could have left at any time; the monster with the pyramid head never came back, leaving them unmolested. In fact, he tried to get Harry to leave multiple times, practically begged him to take his chances, to try and get out while he still had some semblance of himself. Harry, in a blaze of either nobility or stupidity, refused to leave his side.

No. No, it was more than either stupidity or nobility. Harry was losing himself, pieces of his mind, of his memories, drifting further away every day, every moment, and somehow, when he was touching James, being sheltered in his arms... it slowed. It never stopped-the drift was insidious, constantly tugging at him and dragging at his mind-but at least it slowed, became a wave instead of a riptide, and even a few moments of coherence, of lucidity, were worth it to him.

So they stayed, Harry clinging to him, keeping himself pressed against James like they were a pair of magnets with opposite polarities... and James held him and watched him drift.

It wasn't so bad at first; Harry was just spacey, distant, but a few words from James would call him back into himself, help him focus on the here and now. They spent the time curled around each other, Harry with one hand always on James's face, talking quietly about their time together, remembering everything they had gone through together, everything they had experienced.

As time passed, James found himself doing more and more of the talking as Harry's memories began to fade, as the holes in his memories became wider, their edges more tattered. As James spoke, Harry stared up at him, studying him like he was trying to memorize every line, every crevasse, every color and shape and texture of his face; he listened intently, focusing all his attention on James's words, trying to hold memories in his mind while they slipped through like water through his fingers.

Eventually, his throat dry and his voice a husky rasp, James ran out of stories to tell. He paused, and Harry looked up at him expectantly, his hand gently caressing the side of James's face in encouragement. James swallowed, forcing down scant saliva past the desert that had sprung up in the back of his mouth.

"And then what happened?" Harry asked, his voice faint and whispering, his hand cold on James's cheek.

James had told him everything, right up until the night Harry had died; there weren't any other stories to tell, nothing that didn't involve this place they found themselves in. But Harry was waiting, watching him with wide, slightly vacant eyes, and if telling him stories kept him here a little longer, even for a few extra moments... then James would tell him stories.

"I came home from my class," James murmured. "You were waiting for me. You were reading in front of the TV when I got home, and we had dinner together and went to bed."

"And?"

"And then the next day..."

And James told him stories, weaving together the history that he and Harry should have had together, the years they should have enjoyed, the time that had been stolen from them. Harry listened quietly, drinking in the stories like they were water to a man left wasting in the desert, asking questions when James wasn't specific enough, encouraging him when he faltered; once or twice, he even offered suggestions when James got stuck on what happened next. Together, they created the rest of their lives, made a tapestry of shared experiences and time spent growing old.

"Then what happened?" Harry asked him one evening, his eyes distant and unfocused, his skin pale and waxy, his voice distorted until it sounded like a breeze rustling through fallen autumn leaves. As much as he wished he could keep lying to himself, James knew that Harry was getting worse, that they didn't have much time left.

"We got up early," he started, his voice cracking. "It was a beautiful spring morning; the flowers Heather planted were starting to sprout on the lawn. Pink and purple and white crocuses, poking up through the snow."

"There was snow?"

"It was almost gone," James reassured him, surprised yet again by what Harry remembered, by what random memories had been left intact. "The sun was shining, winter was almost over. We had breakfast together, and then you read in the living room while I put together a model plane on the kitchen table."

"Who was the model plane for?"

"Heather's son. She and her husband brought their children up the weekend before, remember? We took them to the park and pushed them on the swings."

Harry smiled, his mouth jerking in a strange, awkward way, his eyes reflecting the memories of grandchildren yet to be, and waited for James to continue.

"After lunch, we took a long walk around the meadow behind the house. We saw some deer, and a fox, and more flowers. Everything was starting to come back to life."

"Springtime is beautiful," Harry told him, stroking his face gently.

"Yes, it is. After our walk... we were both tired, so we went upstairs to take a nap. You... you put your head on my shoulder, and I had my arms around you, and..." God, why was this so hard?

"And?" Harry encouraged.

"And..." James's voice broke, "and I told you I loved you, and you said you loved me, and..."

"And we fell asleep," Harry finished.

James nodded fervently, his throat completely closed up on him, his eyes burning with the tears he couldn't shed.

Harry thought about this for a moment, then leaned forward so his forehead, cool and clammy, was resting on James's. He ran his thumb lightly over James's trembling lower lip, and put his other hand on James's chest, right over his pounding heart.

"I'm sorry," Harry whispered.

"Sorry?" James asked, surprised. "Sorry about what?"

"I'm sorry... that it can't really be like that."

James's entire body hitched once in an enormous, dry sob. "I'm sorry, too."

Harry smiled at him, his expression wistful and empty and loving all at once. "I wish I could make this easier for you..."

"Don't you say that," James ordered, suddenly frantic and on the edge of panic. He cupped Harry's face in his hands, almost being rough in his haste, and looked deep into Harry's eyes, trying to find the man he loved, trying to find his life-preserver, trying to find his savior. Harry gazed back at him, preternaturally calm, unafraid, almost... accepting.

Maybe Harry could accept what was happening, but James couldn't. "Don't you worry about me," he insisted, nearly babbling. "Don't you do that, don't think about me, just worry about yourself, focus on staying here, staying with me... don't leave me, Harry, don't leave me here alone..."

Harry took hold of one of James's hands and shifted it closer to his lips. He brushed a kiss across James's palm, and the feel of his icy lips silenced James as effectively as if he'd been slapped. "I'll stay as long as I can," Harry promised quietly, his mouth still hidden under James's hand.

"How long?" James asked, hating himself for asking but needing to know, needing to know with a hunger that went all the way down to his bones.

"Not much longer," Harry said softly.

James swam up out of sleep slowly, the currents and tides of unconsciousness retreating with ease to a distant shore. He awoke cold and shivering, as he'd been doing for days (weeks? months?) now; Harry was frigid in his arms, radiating cold like a block of ice, but being able to hold him was worth never feeling warm. If he meant Harry would stay with him, James would happily never feel warm again.

He opened his eyes and looked down at Harry; he'd fallen asleep coiled around him, half-lying on top on him, with his head on his shoulder and his face tucked into the side of his neck. Harry was still sleeping, his body motionless, deep inside himself.

James studied him for a moment, drinking in his features, trying to memorize everything about him, trying to fix him in his mind, permanent and unchanging. As he slowly woke up further, he started to realize that something wasn't right, but his sleepy mind couldn't get a bead on it. He shivered, still cold, and tugged the sheet they were laying under up around his shoulders, his fingers slipping over the checkered fabric.

His eyes suddenly widened in horror. The checkered fabric... neat little squares and rectangles, composed in white and tan... he could see the checks on the bottom sheet through Harry. Sometime during the night, Harry had faded, his body turning translucent, pale and shimmering, and James could see straight through him to the sheet below.

"Oh, no," he whispered, his words sounding like a sob. "Oh, no..." and he was clutching Harry up against him, pressing his slack, unresponsive body close to his own, ignoring the cold, "no, Harry, don't leave me, don't go away, I need you, I love you, please, please don't leave me..."

He got up into a sitting position, pulling Harry with him, and Harry was too light, he couldn't have weighed more than a child, and he was fading, getting fainter and fainter, his body changing from icy cold to simple, dispassionate cool. James cradled him in his arms, the other man's body sprawled across his lap, and held Harry's face in one hand, directing it up towards his own. Harry's skin had a slick, smooth texture under his fingers.

"Don't leave me," he repeated softly, his voice breaking apart and sounding like a child's. "Don't leave me, Harry, don't leave me, not like this, not here, not this way, don't leave me, come back, come back... come back..."

Harry's eyelids flickered, and the area around them became a little more solid, a little more opaque. He slowly, ever so slowly, opened his eyes, and they were as dark and empty as Maria's had been, the last time he'd seen her.

James started at the memory; he'd been shying away from it, deliberately keeping it at arm's length, but now it seemed startlingly real, unusually bright and insistent in his mind's eye. He remembered Maria's eyes, so dark, like a piece of the night sky had been ripped away and trapped in them, and he remembered what she'd said to him.

"You've been given a second chance, James," she'd told him. "You can do it right this time. You can let go."

Harry shuddered, distracting him from his thoughts, and as he watched the blackness in Harry's eyes receded, blue and white bleeding back in, and Harry's skin rippled across his bones and became solid once more, and he got heavier in his arms, and James clasped him to his chest and buried his face in the side of Harry's neck, breathing in the faint, almost forgotten scent of him.

James felt a hesitant, weak hand on his cheek, and he leaned back. Harry was gazing up at him, and his eyes were full of sadness, of regret, of the pain of keeping himself where he didn't belong anymore. Harry's throat worked, but he seemed unable to speak, and he squinted his eyes closed in frustration. When he opened them, one single, crystalline tear spilled down his pale cheek.

James walked the streets of Silent Hill, his arms burdened and his ankle constantly threatening to collapse underneath him. The joint wasn't healed, probably would never heal correctly, especially with this final outrage perpetrated against it, but James found that he didn't care. If he had to cut off his foot himself, he'd do it, to accomplish what needed to be done today.

The fog rippled and curled around and ahead of him, but it never seemed to get close enough to touch, always maintaining a certain distance from his body. That was strange, but he found that he didn't care about that either. Silent Hill could be as weird as it wanted to, it wouldn't make any difference to him. Not right now.

He was downtown again, making his slow, plodding way through, when he heard the scraping sound, the blade across pavement noise that heralded the red pyramid creature, the master of this place, the god amongst the damned. For the first time, that sound didn't send immediate terror and panic spiking through his chest; his heart was too heavy, too weighted, to have room for fear. He stopped walking, standing where he was, and waited.

The sound got closer, and Harry trembled in his arms, cinching his arms tighter around James's neck-some piece of him remembered the sound and what it meant, and his body reacted when his mind no longer could. James murmured quietly to him, nonsense words and syllables, and Harry relaxed, becoming still and complacent in his arms once more.

Finally, after what seemed like a long time but probably wasn't, the monster lurched into view. It stood in front of them, its chest heaving with deep, slow breaths, its knife trailing behind it. The fog wafted away from it, allowing the dim light to shine across its red helmet, to glint off its enormous knife, to create dark shadows under its huge, heavy muscles. It stood there, watching them with its eyeless face, and James looked back at it impassively. It suddenly lifted its arm that wasn't holding the knife and pointed at them, and James wasn't surprised when he saw his green jacket dangling from its gloved hand.

He stared at it a few seconds longer, then said quietly, his voice carrying through the near-silent atmosphere, "Go away. We don't belong to you anymore."

Time stopped, doubled in on itself, telescoping, and James saw the thing's knife arm twitch, the muscles bunching in anticipation. In slow motion, it shifted its weight, leaning forward, its massive head teetering on the edge of balance. James waited; whatever else happened, he was finished running.

The thing kept its forward posture for a second longer, then rocked back onto its heels. Its arm dropped, James's jacket fluttering from its fingers, and the thing just stood there, its hand opening and closing, its shoulders rolling in agitation, acting almost... confused. Uncertain.

'It's not used to being challenged,' James thought, and when once his heart would have leapt with excitement at the discovery, now it could barely manage a few quickened, sluggish beats. His heart and mind were too consumed with thoughts of Harry to care about the monster any longer.

The deposed god shuffled its feet back and forth a few times, stirring the long apron that hung across its knees and making little puffs of fog swirl between its legs. It gestured towards him a few times more, the gestures half-hearted, with no real menace, and then, amazingly, it turned and walked away, dragging its knife behind it.

James listened until the scraping sound was far in the distance-he wanted to wait until it was gone completely, but his throbbing ankle and Harry's low, shallow breathing made that impossible-and then started moving again, his head lowered, pushing on with grim determination. He might have only been in Silent Hill two times, but he knew exactly where he was going.

He heard the lake before he saw it; the waves lapped quietly at the shoreline, moving in and out with a low murmuring that almost sounded like voices, if you listened closely and long enough. He kept away from the beach area, and instead followed the shoreline, moving parallel to the lake until he arrived at the marina, where the small boats and pleasure crafts drifted lazily in the water.

The water felt cool around his ankles, and the pier's wood was rough under his fingertips. He kept one hand on the pier, the other arm supporting Harry, and waded out until the water flowed around his thighs. Shifting Harry carefully, holding him in front of him, James slowly sank into the lake.

The water came up to his collarbone when he was sitting on the sandy lake bed, and he could feel the current swirling and pulling at his clothing with softly tugging fingers. He leaned against a post holding up the pier, and arranged Harry in front of him, settling him between his legs, holding his body against his own. Harry's head flopped limply on his neck, and James gently pulled it back so it was resting against his shoulder, facing the cloud-covered sky. He stroked Harry's hair, imitating the motion that had always calmed him down when he was in the grip of a nightmare, and waited.

Harry's breathing deepened, and he opened his eyes for the first time since they'd left the room. He stared up at the sky for a moment, then picked his head up and looked around him. James kept his hand close, in case Harry didn't have the strength to hold the position.

"James," Harry exclaimed, his voice raspy but so recognizable, so familiar, "this is where we first met!"

"Yeah," James agreed, smoothing Harry's hair back as his neck muscles failed him and his head fell backwards onto his shoulder, "in the lake."

Harry sighed, and lifted one hand to lay it across James's arm, where it crossed his chest. "I... I don't know how long I can stay," he said quietly.

James nodded, closing his eyes. "I know."

Harry didn't say anything else, but leaned into James, resting his forehead along James's jaw. James sighed himself, deep and shuddering, and held Harry a little closer. "Does... does it hurt?" he asked, his voice cracking.

"No," Harry answered immediately, and he sounded coherent enough that James opened his eyes and looked down at him. Harry was staring at a spot off in the distance, his eyes dreamy. "It doesn't hurt," he explained, speaking slowly. "It feels... it feels like when you're almost asleep, but not quite... and you try to stay awake, but keep getting pulled down... towards sleep again."

"Is it dark?" James asked, his voice tight with fear; he couldn't stand the thought of sending Harry anywhere dark.

Harry shook his head. "Not dark..." he breathed, his voice beginning to sound far away again. "The sun... the sun is shining... wherever it is..."

James choked a little, and suddenly all the tears, all the crying he'd wanted to do but couldn't, welled up within him, and he was weeping, long, desperate sobs, the kind that felt like they would never end. He pulled Harry in against him, their bodies fitting together like two halves of the same whole, holding on to him like he could hold him in place with the strength of his arms alone. His body shook, wracked with the crying, and it felt like his chest would rip itself apart from the force of it.

Then, with fingers already gone as cool and silky as the lake water, Harry reached up and brushed the tears off his cheeks. "Don't cry, James," he said quietly, "this isn't forever."

James held him as close as he could, and struggled to get control of himself. Harry kept wiping at his face, waiting patiently, until James felt like he could speak again.

"I love you," he blurted out, his voice raw.

"Love you too," Harry breathed.

James, his eyes closed, still leaking tears, gently pulled Harry's head in towards his own, until their heads rested together and he could feel Harry's breath on the side of his neck. He breathed in Harry's scent, felt Harry in his arms, and then whispered, "It's okay... you can go now."

"Not forever," Harry repeated, and James nodded frantically, wanting to believe that more than anything he'd ever dreamed of believing in. He kept his arms around Harry, holding him tightly, and listened to Harry's breathing, which slowed... and slowed... and then was gone.

Harry was gone.

James relaxed his arms, letting go of the lake water he held in them, and leaned his head back against the pier. He felt the tears spilling out of his eyes, trickling down his cheeks and into the lake, and maybe they joined with whatever Harry had become, and that was comforting... that somehow, in some way, they were still together.

James opened his eyes, staring up at the sky the way Harry had, and watched as the clouds and the fog broke apart, and sunshine streamed down onto the rippling surface of Toluca Lake.

_Epilogue_

I don't know how long I beat on that bathroom wall, screamed at it, pleaded with it, scratched at it in desperation until my fingernails were broken and my hands were bloody. Whatever I did, it remained resolutely closed to me, the runes and the hole refusing to reappear, refusing to take me back to Silent Hill. Back to my dads… or whatever was left of them.

I must have eventually worn myself down and passed out in exhaustion, because I was startled back into consciousness by something clattering off the tile floor. It sounded like a machine gun going off in the enclosed space, and my instincts kicked in before I could remember where I was. I scrambled to my feet, one hand out defensively, the other one grabbing out in the air for a weapon that should have been there. My eyes were spinning, both from fatigue and stress, and all I saw was a tall figure standing in the doorway, looming threateningly before me.

"Uh… I'm not going to hurt you," an unfamiliar voice said.

For some reason, that started to calm me down. The monsters in Silent Hill wouldn't bother lying to get close, they'd just go for my face. I stopped feeling for a weapon (the best I'd found anyway was a half-empty bottle of shampoo), and blinked rapidly, trying to clear my eyes and ignore the blood thundering in my ears.

There was a young guy standing in the bathroom's doorway, his hands raised, palms towards me. The clattering sound had been a box of bathroom stuff that he'd obviously dropped, exploding and scattering across the floor.

"Did this used to be your apartment?" he asked as I studied him.

"Where are we?" I asked him, stalling for time. He didn't look like a psycho, he actually looked almost painfully average. Tallish, pale, wearing jeans and a white shirt… the only thing that stood out about him was his hair, mussed and carefully crafted into that 'I just stumbled out of bed' look that screams 'douche.' He hadn't shaved either, probably on purpose. Or maybe because I was in his bathtub.

"Ashfield, Maine," he told me. "United States," he added helpfully after a moment's thought.

I tried to climb out of the tub and nearly fell; my legs and back were stiff and aching with pain after spending one night asleep on a barstool and another in a bathtub. He started to try and catch me, but hesitated at the last minute, like his instincts had taken over for a second before his brain could warn him that crazy might be catching.

"What's your name?" he asked, backing up as I started staggering towards the door.

"Heather," I told him shortly, blundering through the apartment. I knew where Ashfield was; Silent Hill was only about ten miles up the road. My wallet and car keys swung heavily in my pant's pocket. I could be there in under an hour if I hurried.

"I'm Henry," he told me, trailing after me, probably wanting to make sure I didn't take any of his stuff. Not that I'd be interested in it; looked like he'd just moved in, everything was still in boxes, and there wasn't a lot of it. He didn't have anything I wanted—all I wanted was to get back to Silent Hill and find out what the hell had happened.

My chest clenched up on me, and I nearly toppled over from the unexpected pain. We'd been so close, Dad and I, so close to getting out of there, and he'd gone back. I shouldn't have been surprised; deep down, I knew that he would never leave J.D. behind, and mixed in with all the sadness that swirled inside me, there was also some shame…. I'd been so quick to dismiss him, to try and get the hell out of there with Dad. Even though Dad was… was… not really Dad anymore, but goddammit, that didn't matter!

"You okay?" Henry asked, sliding up beside me. "You look like you're going to pass out."

"No," I managed, shoving the word out through my tight throat. "I… I'm not… I need to get to Silent Hill." Suddenly, there wasn't anything more urgent in my life.

He looked at me doubtfully. "There's a bus line in front of the complex that heads out that way."

"Thanks." I stumbled towards the door, then thought better of it. I turned around to face Henry, and he stared back at me solemnly. He might have stupid hair, but he hadn't called the cops on me, so he had that in his favor. Actually, he was taking this whole situation remarkably well. "Has anything… weird been happening around here?" I asked him.

He cracked a smile at me. "You mean besides you showing up in my tub?"

"Besides that."

"No, nothing out of the ordinary." He shrugged. "I haven't been here long, though."

I furrowed my brow in thought. "Do you have a pen and paper?"

Surprisingly, he didn't question my bizarre request, and wordlessly dug around in a box for a minute before handing me a scrap of paper and a pencil nub. I scrawled my name on it, along with both my cell phone number and the number at the house.

"Here." I gave it to him. "If anything… strange starts happening here, you call me immediately, okay?" He nodded, and that simple gesture brought tears to my eyes. He was just so damn normal, so ordinary, like we'd been a few weeks ago. "Especially if you see… if you see… a tall blonde guy and a shorter, dark-haired guy hanging around, okay?" Then I was lost, sobbing again, and I turned and ran out the door, slamming it behind me.

Henry watched from the window as the strange young girl staggered out onto the lawn. She made her way to the bus stop okay, and waited there, her arms wrapped around herself. He watched until she got on the bus; at the last moment, she turned around and looked back towards the complex, and even though he knew she couldn't see him, he waved half-heartedly anyway.

As the bus pulled away, he glanced down at the piece of paper she'd given him. He looked at it for a moment before crumpling it in his palm and tossing it out the window with a snort.

Why were the pretty ones always insane?

_Author's Note: So that's it! Thank you so much for reading! I have a question-and-answer post over at deviantArt right now, where you can ask any questions you like about the story or whatever else. My user name over there is MissAzrael._


	26. Chapter 26

James drifted slowly out of sleep, rising gently through the layers of consciousness, floating upwards like an air bubble through deep water. Wherever he was, it allowed for such slow, peaceful waking; he was warm, and comfortable, buried in heavy drifts of blankets like a bear hibernating under a pile of dead leaves. Still mostly asleep, his eyes closed, he reached out, and found nothing on the other side of the bed.

Harry. Harry was gone.

His eyes snapped open, his mind suddenly and fitfully awake. Harry had been here, he'd fallen asleep holding on to him, he couldn't have just disappeared during the night, this place couldn't be that cruel... and instead of the dingy, dark room he remembered, he was somewhere else. Somewhere new, as far from Silent Hill as he could possibly imagine.

For a single, confused second, he wondered if the whole thing had been a dream, if Heather had dragged him to the Apple store again and he'd fallen asleep while she perused the sparkling machines with lust in her eyes. The room was clean, aggressively white, almost like a hospital but without that thin veneer of grunge and misery, and the lighting was soft, almost golden, across his hands. He had been sleeping in a narrow, pod-like bed, under a blanket that was surprisingly heavy for its thinness, and sometime during the night, someone had changed his clothes. Instead of the filthy sweater and ragged jeans he remembered falling asleep in, he was wearing a white, long-sleeved, tunic-like garment, and his skin underneath it felt... clean. He raised a shaking hand to his head, touching his hair, and it felt smooth and fluffy under his fingertips, instead of the greasy, dirty mats he expected.

"Where the hell am I?" he muttered shakily, and the room took the sound and swallowed it away, until it was as if he'd never spoken at all.

James was sitting up, studying the room and trying to find some discernible feature to it, anything that stood out, when the wall hissed quietly and slid to one side. He shied away from it-it had looked just like the other three walls, who would've thought there was a door there?-and the bright light coming through the doorway dazzled his eyes for a moment, temporarily blinding him. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he squinted at the door and the figure silhouetted there, his muscles tensing underneath the thin blanket, ready to fight or run at a moment's notice.

"You don't have to do that," said the figure quietly, and James dropped his hand and gaped.

"Harry?" he asked, not even hearing the longing in his voice.

The figure took a few steps forward and sat on the edge of the bed. It reached out, its arm impossibly long and slender in the otherworldly light, and took his hand, the one he'd been using to shield his eyes just a moment before. Its hand was warm, and gentle and human and oh god he knew that hand and why weren't his eyes adjusting why wouldn't they just work already?

He blinked a few more times, and the world swam into focus, his eyes finally getting used to the light, and the figure on the edge of the bed transformed, changed from something he didn't recognize into someone he did, someone he would recognize long after he'd forgotten himself.

"Harry!" he gasped, and flung his arms around the other man, pulling him in close against him.

Harry laughed quietly into his shoulder, linking his arms around James's waist and returning his embrace, albeit less frantically and with far more grace and considerably less scrambling. James breathed in the scent of him, that cloying, achingly familiar scent, and cautiously ran his hands over Harry's body; he felt real and solid, present in this time and this place, not like the slick, almost translucent Harry that had been tortured by the drift... and he was warm. His body was warm again, powered by an internal fire that the drift had put out.

"It's really you, isn't it?" James asked, loosening his hold and leaning back so he could get a good look at Harry's face.

Harry smiled up at him, his complexion healthy and glowing, all the fine lines and blemishes and textures of his skin back in place. "It's really me."

"Where... where the hell are we? What happened? Is Little Bit okay? What is this place? What..."

Harry put a finger on James's lips, stopping the sudden deluge of questions. "It would probably be easier just to show you," he said, standing, and walked to the door. "Come with me."

Throwing the blanket aside, James leaped to his feet and trotted after Harry, dimly aware that his bad ankle, previously unable to support him, now took his weight easily and without complaint.

Harry led him down a long, windowless hallway, and James felt like he should have been afraid, but wasn't. Something about this hallway was different; it wasn't foreboding, or endless, and the walls were the same bright, clean white as the room he'd slept in and the tunics he and Harry both wore. It was quiet in the hallway, but not silent; their footsteps echoed dully against the floor, and behind the walls, he could hear machines whirling and working away.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Harry turned a corner, and James hurried to follow him, not wanting to let him out of his sight. If he hadn't been hurrying, the new room might not have taken him by surprise; as it was, he staggered backwards a step, completely flabbergasted and shocked silent, his senses temporarily overwhelmed.

The room itself wasn't that impressive, although the one entire wall of windows was pretty nice. What made his jaw drop and his mind reel was the view outside the window-a sprawling, infinite star field, the Milky Way twinkling before him like diamonds spilled across black velvet.

Harry took his arm, holding him above the elbow, and his touch grounded James, brought his mind away from the edge where it had been teetering, unable to take in the immensity of what lay before him. "It's a little much at first," Harry said apologetically. "I'm sorry, I should have warned you."

"... the hell?" James squeaked, shock transporting his voice back in time to puberty.

Harry opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by a short blonde streak that slammed into James and hugged him fiercely.

"J.D.!" Heather cried, her voice excited. "You're awake!"

James instinctively wrapped an arm around her, and she beamed up at him happily. "You have to see this!" she told him, and dragged him towards the wall of windows.

Except it wasn't a wall, was it? It was a... a windshield, an enormous windshield that wrapped halfway around the room, giving them an unblocked view of the stars roiling in front of them. Normally, James had no fear of heights, but something about that windshield, the closer he got to it, made him feel like the floor was dropping out from under his feet. He clutched Harry's arm tightly, thinking hysterically that it would keep him from floating off into the vast nothingness. Harry patted his elbow sympathetically, and whispered to him "It bothers everyone at first. You get used to it."

Up close to the window (while James struggled to keep himself from vomiting as space dipped away below them), Heather stopped them at a small control station. "Check this out!" she chirped, showing him the control panel, which looked surprisingly similar to a car's dashboard. "Any one can drive it!"

"Drive what?" James managed to choke out.

She looked at him like he was the biggest idiot on the planet. "The spaceship."

For just a second, James wondered if he had gone completely insane, and was gibbering away in a padded room somewhere. Then Harry squeezed his arm and took a step closer to him, gently pressing up against his side, and James realized that he didn't care. If he was insane, then so be it-if his insanity let him be with his family again, would let him be happy again, then he'd take that over the awful, aching loneliness of reality every time. He leaned into Harry and sighed, the vertigo passing away behind his eyes.

Someone coughed pointedly nearby, and James turned his head to study the person controlling the spaceship.

He was wearing one of the white tunics too, but he had accessorized his with a canvas vest, which stood out jarringly against the crisp whiteness. He was also wearing a trucker's cap, pulled low over his dark eyes, and he scowled out at James from under the bill, his blue-shadowed jaw clenched obstinately.

"James, this is Travis Grady," Harry filled in politely. "Travis, James Sunderland."

Travis glowered at James for a moment longer, and James got the distinct feeling that this man disliked him on sight. He tried to smile, and offered out his hand to be shaken. The other man glanced down at it, then back up at his face. He grunted "Meetcha," and then turned back to the steering wheel.

"Travis," Harry chastised softly, as James dropped his hand and shuffled his feet awkwardly. He could feel the blood rising to his face.

"I'm kinda busy here, Harry," Travis said gruffly, and shifted the spaceship harder than he had to, making the whole room jerk nauseatingly. It's a stick-shift, James marveled to himself; the spaceship is a stick-shift.

Heather rolled her eyes, but James noticed that she didn't do it where Travis could have seen her. "Come on," she told James. "There's some more people who want to meet you."

In a daze, he followed her across the room. He hadn't even noticed the round conference table in the corner, or the people who were watching avidly as he crossed the room towards them. He felt a smile that felt more like a grimace spread across his face as he sank into a chair across from them. Heather was introducing them, but he heard her voice from somewhere far away as he sank his face into his hands.

"Heather," Harry interrupted her steady stream of chatter. "Maybe James needs a little more time to adjust to all this?" James glanced at him gratefully, and Harry gave his shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

One of the men across the table leaned forward. "You'll get used to it," he said, unaware that he was echoing Harry's words from earlier. "I mean, it's rough at first, but then it's not so bad."

James looked up at him. He was a younger man, not much older than Heather, with shaggy, unkempt brown hair and nondescript features (except for a slight overbite). He was wearing a pair of dog-tags that hung against the chest of his white tunic.

"I didn't have any trouble," said the other man at the table, and James shifted his eyes to him. His light brown hair was longer than the young soldier's, and carefully, elaborately coiffed over his forehead. He looked like he'd be tall when he was standing, although he was currently bent over some papers spread out in front of him. His tunic was a little different, with a high collar that was buttoned closely around his neck.

The soldier sighed and leaned back. "Yes, Henry, we all know how badass you are, you don't need to keep reminding us."

Henry glanced up from what he was doing, and even from across the table, James could feel the icy disdain in his gaze when he looked at the young soldier. He stared at the other man long enough to make the soldier start squirming uncomfortably, then flashed his white teeth in a smile. "Just so we're clear on that, Alex," he said cheerfully, then turned to James. "Pleased to meet you, James," he said before looking back down at his papers. "I'm Henry Townsend, and that's Alex Shepherd."

"Yeah..." James responded; he had only just met him, but he already knew that he didn't want Henry Townsend as an enemy. "Pleased to meet you too."

"Henry just showed up here one day," Heather informed him. "We didn't have to go and find him like we did the others."

"There's... others?"

For the first time, Heather looked a little uncomfortable, biting her lip and looking down at her hands, which were knotted and twisting in her lap. Harry's demeanor changed too; he shifted in his seat next to James and leaned in close, slipping his arm through James's and holding tightly to him, resting his head on James's shoulder. James glanced down in surprise-Harry needing comfort from him, that was a first. Heather unknotted her hands and grabbed one of James's, and then she leaned in too, actually shifting his arm up and around her shoulders so he was holding on to her.

"What _is it_ with you two?" James asked, baffled.

"It's... the others. They don't like them."

The young soldier, Alex, having regained his composure after his spat with Henry, took it on himself to explain, since both Harry and Heather couldn't... or wouldn't. "There's two more people on the ship," he told James. "Harry and Heather here don't like being around them, because... well, once you meet them, you'll understand."

"Are they dangerous?"

"No more than anyone else who survived Silent Hill," Henry said calmly, his voice cool and dispassionate. "They're just a little... disconcerting, but they're not dangerous."

"Is that what brought us all here? That we've all been to Silent Hill?" James asked; the revelation should have surprised him, but he really couldn't find it in himself to be shocked anymore.

For the first time, Travis spoke up from the steering panel. "That and the fact that someone doesn't know how to control a swerving car."

That got Harry's attention; he took his head off James's shoulder and glared across the room. "I wasn't going to run over a little girl!" he snapped.

"Just saying."

Alex, ruffled at being interrupted and having his explanation derailed, stood up and beckoned to James. "Come with me," he said importantly. "I can take you to meet the others."

James glanced at Harry, who smiled wanly and let go of his arm. "Go ahead," he said quietly.

"Yeah," Heather piped up from his other side. "Alex is cool."

"Of course I'm cool!" the soldier blustered, looking put out. "Come on, follow me," and he stalked off out of the room, James trailing behind him.

Once they were in the hallway (and out of sight of Henry, James couldn't help noticing), Alex perked up a little. "I'm glad you're awake," he confided as he strode purposefully along. "Harry and Heather were really worried about you, and when Harry's in a bad mood, it makes everyone else crabby." He paused for a moment, but when James didn't respond, he continued on a different vein. "I wanted to meet you anyway. Is it true you fought off the bogeyman?"

"The what?" James asked, dumbfounded.

"The pyramid things! Harry said the bogeyman followed you guys, and that you knew how to fight it, so I figured it probably came from your world, and I saw one too, and I can't believe you actually know how to fight them, that is so cool, and..."

"You're giving me a headache."

"Fine, then," Alex said sulkily. "We're almost there, anyway."

They walked in silence for a few more minutes, until Alex reached out and aggressively stabbed one finger at a spot on the wall. It didn't look any different from the rest of the wall to James, but it must have been a switch of some kind; another hidden door slid open with a hiss, exposing a dimly lit room.

Alex stuck his head in the doorway. "Hey, guys!" he chirped brightly. "There's someone here to meet you!" He gestured James in with one hand, but made no move to step into the room himself. James looked at him quizzically, and Alex stared back benignly. With a sigh, he walked through the door and into the room.

It wasn't as brightly lit as the hallway or the main room, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim, shadowy light. This room, more than any other on the ship, reminded him of the place they all had in common, and he wondered why anyone would choose to stay here. Then his eyes adjusted, and he gasped and took an unconscious step backwards.

Behind him, Alex laughed quietly.

The girl sitting at the table looked up first, and it was like catching a bizarre glimpse into the future. She was Heather, but she also wasn't-she was older, with dark hair and sallow skin, and her eyes had a horrible, haunted deepness to them that had never darkened his Little Bit's face. She looked up at him, her expression blank and hopeless, like she expected nothing from him but pain, and he noticed that the corners of her mouth were bracketed with the heavy lines of a woman much older. She was sitting next to a man, holding onto his hands for dear life, and his head was down, hidden in the shadows, and James was suddenly, desperately afraid of what the shadows might be hiding.

The Heather who wasn't Heather-the Other Heather-tilted her head to one side, a gesture his Heather made, and James felt dizzy again, like the floor was gliding out from underneath him.

"I know you," she said quietly. "We've met before," and her voice sounded like the wind through a cold and empty place.

James swallowed, concentrating all his attention on her, hoping against hope that the man would keep his head down. "I... I don't think we have," he told her, his voice raspy.

She studied him a moment longer, then dropped her gaze back to the table top. Her attitude of subservience and despair was all the more depressing because she was so much like his Heather, his Little Bit, and he couldn't stand the thought of her being this beaten down, this wretched. "What happened to you?" he asked.

Looking up again, she squeezed the man's hands. "My father..." she started, and then her voice trailed off into silence. The man shifted in his seat, and leaned forward into the light.

It wasn't as bad as James had feared. The man looked like he could have been Harry's brother, or another close relative, but he wasn't his Harry, that much was clear. This man was shorter, a little heavier, and wearing a garish Hawaiian shirt that would have never found its way into their closet. He wore glasses over his mild brown eyes, and his hair was lighter, and cut differently, and there were a million other small, subtle differences, but... but when he looked at James, his eyes reflected nothing but a cool, patient indifference, and Harry never looked at him like that. Never.

The Other Harry watched him for a few seconds, taking in his features, searching for any kind of recognition. Finding none, he nodded once to James, acknowledging him, then turned back to his daughter, speaking to her quietly, reassuringly, and James realized that the Other Heather had started weeping soundlessly.

James stepped back out into the hallway, and the door whispered shut behind him.

"Weird, isn't it?" Alex asked him as they walked back to the main room. "It's like they're Harry and Heather, but from a different reality. The girl even calls herself Cheryl."

"Do they stay in there all the time?"

"The girl won't go anywhere without the man, and for some reason, he won't leave that room, so... so yeah, they don't leave. Which is okay, I guess; I mean, seems like they're fine in there alone, and honestly, it'd be kind of awkward to have them out and around the real Harry and Heather, so it all works out."

"I guess it does," James agreed, although he couldn't get the Other Heather's haunted, damned eyes out of his head.

Back in the main room, Heather was sitting next to Henry, pouring over his papers with him. She glanced up and waved at James, her smile and equilibrium restored, and he didn't think he'd ever been so glad to see her looking happy and normal. Alex left his side and went to join them, presumably to get into another show of dominance with Henry, and James bit the inside of his cheek to hide his smile; he didn't think Alex would ever win that battle.

He walked to the control panel, where Harry was standing and talking with Travis. Sidling up beside Harry, he looped an arm around his waist and tugged him over to his side, planting a heavy, claiming kiss on Harry's temple.

Harry laughed and gently disentangled himself from James's arm, only to have it immediately around his waist again. "Strange, isn't it?" he asked.

James shivered. "Strangest damn thing ever."

Travis coughed loudly again, and James thought he recognized a little twinkle of jealousy in the other man's eyes when he looked down at him. Travis shifted his eyes away as soon as James met them, but the jealousy was definitely there. What would have once sent James into a tailspin of depression and self-doubt now made him grin like a fool. So that's how it was, was it? Well, Travis could be as jealous as he wanted; nothing was making him give up Harry Mason. Not Silent Hill, not death, not even life in a spaceship shuttling between the cosmos. Travis could have the Other Harry, this one was his.

"Where're we going?" he asked politely. No sense in making an enemy of the man, although he didn't let go of Harry's waist, either.

Travis looked up at him, his face composed into a smooth, blank mask. "Looking for someone," he allowed.

"We don't know his name yet," Harry told James; having given up on trying to get away, he slipped his own arm around James's waist companionably. "We won't know it until we pick him up. But he's like us. He's... been there."

"How many more people are out there? People like us?"

Travis barked laughter. "Brother, it's a big spaceship, and we've got nothing but time."


End file.
